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- Written by: Don Goulding
“… I tell you the truth, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20)
In Zimbabwe, the Lord led me to fast for lost souls. I mounted a horse and headed for the highest kopje (hill). For hours I bowed on my face in an abandoned foundation. As God’s holiness moved onto the kopje, I was reduced to recounting my own failures.
“How can you use the prayers of a wayward sinner against the stranglehold of evil on this land?”
The greatness of our God and the smallness of my faith held me to the ground. Linear time ceased as I watched specks dancing over the cement. I stared sideways trying to fathom what I beheld. Hundreds of gray flecks waltzed within the one meter tall brick wall.
In the vista below, Native Africans had set the grasslands on fire to clear the fields. A dozen smoke plumes reached into the sky from three hundred sixty degrees around the kopje. Ashes rained into my temporary sanctuary where the breeze swept them in circles.
Here is how my little faith interpreted the spectacle. The blazes began while I prayed, and just so, God's Spirit put a match to the nonphysical landscape to burn away ancestor worship. With a partnership I didn’t deserve, the Lord used the dancing ashes to demonstrate angelic rejoicing over repentant hearts to come. He heard my small prayers.
A wondrous time of God’s healing followed in the district. Leaders prayed in unity, denominations worshiped together, and witchcraft dried up.
When the prayer of faith strikes the steel of desperation a spark ignites the blast of God’s power.
Prayer: Listening God, hear my small prayers.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Be still, and know that I am God… (Psalms 46:10) (NIV)
In our first years of marriage, I was an awkward husband. I didn’t know when to offer advice, when to listen, or when to give her a hug. After forty years, the message is finally penetrating my male skull, that holding her in silence is an act of potent healing.
Being held during suffering is sometimes even better than the removal of the problem. When someone wraps their arms around me and holds on, it says, “You are loved and your pain is my pain.” That embrace holds tight until I’ve had enough, and it demands nothing in return.
When asked by CBS newsman, Dan Rather, what she said to God in her prayers, Mother Teresa responded, “I don’t say anything, I listen.”
So the reporter asked what God said to her.
“God doesn’t say anything, he listens.”
Every moment, God offers the opportunity to be still and listen to one another. I wish I would step into that holy hug more often. Rushing into praise and intercession is good, but I also need to commune in silence.
From where his Spirit fits against mine, Father may guide me into a specific prayer direction. At times, it will be zeal against the powers of darkness or heartbreak over the world’s dysfunction, but mainly we’ll rejoice and rest together in his goodness. He’ll get his arms around me and draw me into his peace, or his burden, but always into his larger reality—where superfluous words only spoil the moment.
Prayer: Blessed God, hold me still in the center of all you are.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
When Jesus heard this he was amazed and said to those who followed him, “I tell you the truth, I have not found such faith in anyone in Israel! … Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; just as you believed, it will be done for you.” (Matthew 8:10-13)
Traveling through rural Pakistan, we passed bleak communities lacking any sign of women or children. It was considered indecent for women to be seen in public, so only men sat in clusters or roamed about. Oh, how darkness multiplies when humans try to fight evil with their own devices.
Then we arrived at an all-Christian village—an island of joy amid a sea of repression. I stood on the flat church rooftop and watched yellow, blue, and red kites dance above the mud-coated houses. The ladies inhaled the fresh air of outdoor life, girls ran and giggled, and the boys happily made kites. High over a people freed of their sins, flew colorful expressions of a blessed faith.
Faith is the wind that lifts us out of the mud. Without faith, my life is grounded on an expiring planet. I was not made to lie on my face but to soar into heavenly adventures, to dance above corruption and sin. Faith is the only force capable of lifting me into the life that God has planned for me.
Unanchored faith will not do. A kite, carried off by the wind, will flail and snag in the trees. A flyer with a string must guide it. Just so, even the strongest of faiths will crash me into hell if it is not attached to Jesus by the string of biblical truth. Faith blows as Jesus anchors me, and the result is the soaring life my Pakistani friends celebrated.
Prayer: Mighty Lord, by faith, fly me above the world’s demise.