“And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us...And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go….”
(Acts 16:9-10)
We all desire answers to our prayers, and rightly so, but there is another side to answered prayer that one hears very little of today. We see this flipside in our main text. Paul was not content merely to get answers to his own prayers: he wanted to be an answer to others’ prayers. We each need to search our hearts and ask ourselves the question, “Has God used me lately to be an answer to somebody’s prayer?” Our opening reference is not an isolated one; this truth is found throughout the Bible.
I think that being someone else's miracle is better than experiencing your own. It is a wonderful thing to be a WALKING MIRACLE in the lives of others. I wonder what we’d say if the Lord were to come to us and ask, “Choose one of the two: do you want me to answer your prayer, or do you want to be an answer to another's prayer?” As they say, This is where the rubber meets the road.” It is greater to be a blessing than to receive a blessing! I think it is put up or shut up time.
During the Great depression a little girl was sitting on a street curb singing, “Jesus Love Me.” A passerby asked, “If He loves you so much why do you not have any shoes?” The urchin’s reply: “Oh, I prayed and asked God for some. But the person He told to help me hasn’t done so yet.” Humm, sounds like 1 Jn. 3:17 to me:“ But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”
An Old Disciple
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