Answers to Prayer

Chapter 12

THE TRAGEDY OF CRUMBLING HOMES

A spiritual plague has been devastating the lives of men, women, and children around the world. It afflicts both young and old, but especially brings misery to innocent children who can't begin to understand why Mother and Dad can no longer get along, and one of them is now moving out.
 
The past couple decades have seen a climate that desensitizes the mind to one's responsibilities as a spouse and parent. Satan and his angels are working with all the various forces of today's society to destroy the natural affection that the Creator planted in each human being. They permeate our culture with sexual imagery and expose everyone to all kinds of immorality. In this day and age, unless a person makes constant and determined daily requests for God's help to remain pure in thought, heart, and life, even the most self-disciplined individual may imperceptibly become corrupt at heart, and suddenly fall like a rotten oak tree. Permit me to illustrate.

"My husband and I are in our 50s," a woman wrote to me one day, "have raised a family, worked hard to educate our children, and brought them up in the admonition of the Lord. Our grown children have married well, have established homes that are under the blessing of God. I have always been committed to church activities, and enjoyed serving the Lord.

"My husband was first elder of our large church, and lived what we all thought was an exemplary life. He was looked upon as a pillar in the church until about six months ago when it was discovered that he had been secretly enjoying a girlie magazine and pornographic videotapes.

"His evil interest was revealed in the following way. Friends of ours who live in a rural area had been having difficulties with their 20-year-old daughter who was attending a community college. They had discussed the problem with us, and we agreed that Reta (not her name) could live with us, where she could then attend a Christian college.

"All went well until one evening I attended a meeting that ended about an hour earlier than usual. Arriving home, I unexpectedly found my husband in bed with Reta. Since then the whole thing has been like a nightmare.

"My husband has moved to another area, is still shacking up with that innocent-looking girl, and has just informed me that he wants a divorce. He is a changed man, but not for the better. Now he doesn't care about me, about the church, not even about the fact that he has hurt the lives of a great many persons. It is too bad that such a thing took place in our lives. We had reached the point where there were no longer any college tuition bills to meet, no real problems to worry about. My husband and I had been able to set aside quite a lot of money for our retirement, and were looking forward to enjoying the golden years of our lives.

"The thing that makes it so difficult to adjust to my great loss is that my husband had been a man of principle all through his life. I considered him to be as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar when it came to standing firmly for right. It is sad to say, but I was wrong.
"Our two married sons have stopped going to church, and that has brought great distress to the lives of their wives and children."
The woman, after giving me additional information on the problem, requested that I pray for each member of her family. She is hurting and wonders if she could have done anything prayerwise to avert such a tragedy.

In another case a wife wrote how her 60-year-old husband had gotten sexually involved with their 17-year-old foster daughter. Again the husband moved out and is living together with the girl. Head deacon in his church, he greatly shocked many people by his actions. His wife wondered if he could suddenly have become mentally unbalanced. She asked that I pray for all three involved, because she still wants her husband to be in Christ's kingdom. And she too, like so many others who have had such tragedies strike them, wondered if there was a particular way she could have prayed to prevent such a thing happening in her husband's life.

Before I explain what I term preventative praying, I would like to say that over the years I have been an attentive student of human nature. I have always been interested in knowing what compels a person to do something that he or she later deeply regrets. For 20 years I was in telephone directory (yellow pages) advertising sales. Year after year I would call back on the same businesspeople, and they learned to trust me and often began to confide their problems to me.

From what they told me about their lives, I discovered that though a man may have been brought up to practice self-control and to be temperate in all things, when the media, Satan, or anything else begins to influence his imagination toward an attractive female, it will not take long before he is willing to risk all, to throw everything away, to indulge in his fantasies.

A spiritist priest once claimed to me that demon spirits can flash thought images into people's minds to influence them in a particular direction. How Satan could do this we do not know, but we all recognize how evil influences-whatever their source sway people. If men (and women start dwelling upon such evil suggestions, they soon start creating a bright and exciting picture in their minds of what it would be like if only they put that idea into practice.

The more a person plays with the idea or suggestion, the more powerful and realistic it becomes. Soon it can take control of the mind to the point where an individual will find himself or herself doing things he or she knows shouldn't be done. Demon spirits or other influences can take control of the life until nothing on the human level can break the hold.

Because of the deceptive power of sin a Christian spouse should be willing to do some serious preventative praying regardless of how faithful the husband or wife has been to his or her marriage vows. No matter how noble a Christian one has been, it is still possible to fall. Even Satan was a sinless being. Every day it is good to thank God for having blessed a loved one with grace and strength, for having imparted to him or her divine compassionate love. Only when a person possesses the love of Christ can he or she display toward a fellow human being the heavenly graces that adorn the character of our great Redeemer.

The spouse who wants to spend eternity with his or her husband, as well as have him or her in the present life, must secure the stabilizing influence of the Holy Spirit, that great divine power that alone can impart purity of thought, heart, and life. While God never forces anyone to do anything against his or her will, He will, because of the merits of the blood Christ shed on the cross, do everything possible to protect and lead a person toward salvation. Christ tells us always to "pray one for another."

Over the past few years many letters have arrived from husbands and wives in shaky marriages. After I have shared with them these principles, the Spirit of God administered to their spouses the graces of redemption and solidified their union in Christ. Nothing can be more rewarding than to hear again from those same individuals how the Lord has blessed in joyous and surprising ways.

Lost and Found

Here is an outstanding illustration of how the stabilizing influence of the Holy Spirit can restore spiritually wayward individuals.
Shortly after my first prayer book came off the press, I received a letter from a woman whose husband had left her almost four years before. She was particularly impressed by the fact that before I pray for a person who does not serve God, I first ask that the Father will appropriate the merits of Christ's blood to the person in need, always conscious that the individual's redemption has already been paid for.

"When I read in your book that we can pray for the Lord to forgive another's sins," she said, "I was astounded, and began praying for my husband with new faith and hope."

She said that she and her husband were both in their 30s, had good jobs and health, and had looked forward to a bright future. Employed by a multinational corporation, the man spoke three languages, which quickly propelled him up the corporate ladder.
"Before long the demands of the job began to take him away from home days at a time. It wasn't long before the lavish lifestyle of the corporate world began making its mark on him. Even his character was changing in that he became quite critical of me, and seemed to be looking for occasions to disagree on most everything I said.

"He began to criticize the church and its people, and the time came that I found myself going to church alone. As time passed he began wearing expensive jewelry, and not long after I became aware that he was smoking. And when he was brought home drunk from a Christmas party, he added to my disappointment by stating that he was also having an attair with his secretary.

"Our home became a place of contention and unrest. At that time I thanked the Lord that we didn't have any children to be torn apart by the terrible discord. I did all I could to have us seek the help of a Christian counselor, but to no avail. In fact, he moved out and blamed me for breaking up our home."

In a telephone conversation she told me that she didn't hear about him for almost two years. Then she found out that he was in deep trouble with his employer. He had made several decisions that had caused the corporation to lose vast amounts of money. Before long the company terminated him, and he left the area so that she lost track of him. His experience at the multinational corporation now made it impossible to obtain similar employment, which drove him to heavy drinking.

Later she found out that he tried gambling and was successful at it for a time. Next he got involved in drugs, causing him to lose control of his life and everything he possessed. He thought of killing himself, "but discovered that he didn't have what it took to carry on with his plan. That was most shocking to his manhood to realize that he was some kind of coward," his wife told me.
Meanwhile she acquired a copy of my book, read it, and was especially impressed with the chapter "Praying for the Ungodly and the Wicked." She wrote to ask if I would join her in praying for her husband, whom she hoped was still alive.

I wrote back to assure her that the Holy Spirit would surely minister the graces of redemption to the man as she and I sought God's help.

Knowing what both the demons and Christ were determined to do in this man's life, I became bolder in my determination that Satan would not have his way, but that Christ would. With this man, as with everyone else I pray for, I relied on the mighty power of the Holy Spirit to overpower, and render nonoperative, the enemies of Jesus Christ and all those He is determined to save.
I assured the woman that I would put both her and her husband's name on my perpetual prayer list. Daily and without fail I would present them before Jesus. I asked only that she keep me posted on what was happening in their lives.

About a year went by. Then one evening she had on the national television news as it interviewed a group of homeless people in a distant city. The people were living in the back of an abandoned factory under a highway overpass. The state wanted to demolish their shacks and move them elsewhere.

As she was cooking, she heard a familiar voice. Turning around, she saw her husband on the screen. If he had not spoken, she would have never recognized him. He wore a beard and had long hair down his back and, she said, "looked like a tramp. He was a pitiful sight." 

When he stated that he obtained most of his food from the garbage cans behind restaurants, she burst into tears. It broke her heart. Despite her deep sorrow, she was thankful that he was still alive, and that fact gave her hope of better things to come.
The next day she contacted the news network and learned where the interview had been done. Arranging to have some time off from work, she began her search for her husband.

But some time later as she steered her car between shacks and old broken-down machinery to reach a group of men warming themselves by a fire in a steel barrel, she began to worry about her safety and made sure that her car was carefully locked.

One of the men told her what shack to go to, adding that it had no door. She would have to wedge her way between a large piece of heavy canvas and the shack to reach the opening.

The woman found her husband in his 8 x 10-foot shack, lying on a pile of broken-down cardboard boxes about 20 inches in height that he used to insulate himself from the cold of the pavement. As he got up to let some more light into the place, she threw herself into his arms, saying, "I will never let you go!"

Stunned by her action, he kept repeating, "Please let me go. I am filthy—I am disgustingly filthy."

It was late autumn in that distant eastern city, and a light snow was failing. Getting cold, she invited him to sit with her in her car. Refusing to enter the car lest he dirty it, he stood by the door while she kept the window partly down. As the snow continued to fall, he soon resembled a snowman.

Would he sit in the car if she covered the seat with a blanket? she asked. When he said he would, she drove off, to return 45 minutes later with a car blanket and an abundance of hot food from a fast-food restaurant. The sight of him feasting on what he considered food fit for a king brought joy to her heart. Silently she sent a melody of praise ascending to God for bringing her husband back into her life. She believed that God was marvelously answering her prayers.

It took a whole week of talking before he agreed to resume living with her. She discovered that once a person's life has deteriorated to the degree his had, only special divine grace can transform it back again.

When at the end of the first day she had not succeeded in getting him out of his shack, she returned to her motel. That evening she did much praying, and sought special guidance on how to handle the situation. She desperately wanted him to resume a normal life again. Before retiring for the night, she opened her Bible for something to meditate upon. Glancing down at the right-hand page, her eyes fell upon the following words:

"If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:11).

"That's it," she said to herself. "My husband's mind needs to be re-created by the power of the Spirit of God to what it once was— to the degree of sanity that he once possessed." Down on her knees she went, pouring out her heart to God.
Five days passed, and everything seemed at a standstill.

Then an idea entered her mind. What my husband needs is to hear of God's power and love operating in people's behalf in these modern times. I will read him portions of Morneau's book.

That she did, and God began to work through those feeble words. Slowly he began to respond to the Spirit and her suggestions that she and he could still have a bright future together if they would make God first in their lives.

"I couldn't stop the tears from running down my face as I listened to him talk, and realized that the Holy Spirit was bringing my husband back from the dead. He had died spiritually, and now he was alive again, telling me of the joy that he once had when serving God." 

Then she received the shock of her life when he said, "OK, Linda (not her real name), I accept your invitation for us to live once again as husband and wife. That is, if you can get transferred by your company to a city where no one knows us. I couldn't face people who knew me in the past. Meanwhile you will have me stay a few miles out of town—am I right?"

Again she assured him that she would do all that she had promised earlier. It took another couple of days to persuade him to go to a barber shop, to clothing stores, and to clean himself up so that he could live like a normal person once more.

So it was by the mighty outworkings of the Holy Spirit that Linda obtained a transfer to another city, and to her great surprise, it was a promotion that involved a substantial increase in pay. Both are now living happily together in the Lord. Both their Christian walks have, she says, matured under the nurturing of the Spirit of God.

Private people, Linda had once asked me that I never tell anyone about her husband's experience. I had promised to abide by her wishes. However, more recently I began to feel that I should ask permission to include it in this book as a means of exalting our Saviour's love and power. They agreed as long as I did not mention their names or where the events had taken place. I believe their experience gives glory to God in the highest!