Joan Boney ... apostle/prophet
In the 1980's, I was having meetings all over the United States for radio audiences. I would go into the city where I was on radio, rent a meeting room at convention center or hotel and meet for two or three days with the radio audience.
One time, in reading about OT prophets, I noticed how they prayed for people.
I innocently, and stupidly, announced to my radio audience I would have a meeting and pray for people.
I arrived at the Holiday Inn, where I had booked a room for the meeting, and was shocked at what I found. The room was packed with people ... wall to wall.
Myself, I would rather hear the Word of God than go to a meeting filled with prayers.
I'm not much good at prayers. It seems such a simple matter to me. I pray and God answers my prayer. That's that.
But by this one meeting I saw how greedy and ineffectual most church people are ... wanting something they think another person can get for them which they have not been able to get for themselves through prayer. Thieves, crooks, deceivers!
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One time, I was speaking at a church and the pastor called a prayer line for me to pray over people. I was amazed at how many flocked to that line wanting something they could not get themselves by prayer.
I walked up to a very big fat black woman. I said, "And what is it you want God to do for you."
She replied: "I's jest wants more of God."
I said: "God will tell me what you are doing."
She screamed out, waving her hands in the air, saying: "OH, NO, Lord ... Don't tell her!"
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That was certainly an effectual, fervent prayer ... and it brought the house down!
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I hate religious things and most prayers are so contrived, so filled with pretense, hypocrisy, they make a person hearing them sick.
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When I lived in Clovis, NM, USA, the family across the street from me were "home schoolers". They had 4 children and often had many other children meeting in school classes at their home. They were very religious.
One day, about 12 children and adults were in the front yard in a circle, holding hands, heads bowed.
I was horrified!
My mother broke her hip during that time. I got into a very difficult moment after bringing her home from hospital. She got on comode and I couldn't get her off. I ran across the street for help. The husband, who was also very religious, came over but with reluctance, I thought.
A year of so later, there was a WWII movie, Pearl Harbor, and I thought my mother might enjoy seeing this movie so I took her to the theater, It was a struggle, for her wheelchair was heavy and awkward to set up after if was folded. But I managed to get it out of car and get her into wheelchair and I rolled it into the theater. There was an open area in the seating which was about 1/2 way back from the screen. I decided to get her to the front row. I struggled with her but finally got her seated and got her wheelchair folded up and out of the way. I glanced at the row of people seated directly behind us. There sat that neighbor and his wife and 4 children (one was teenaged boy). I was amazed that none of them came voluntarily to help when I was trying to get my mother out of wheelchair and into seat.
Religious people are just terrible. Modern Sadducees and Pharisees.
Later I was giving away an IBM typewriter which I no longer used, having a computer. This teenaged boy from across the street quickly came to my house wanting that typewriter. I gave it to him.
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James 1:27 ... Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
No wonder prayer lines are so long with people wanting you to try to get things for them that they haven't been able to get for themselves. Their insides are so awful and they are so hypocritical is it any wonder God ignores them.
I ignore them also when they come to me. Pastors from around the world are always sending me emails wanting me to pray for something they can't get. Then they want me to send them money, Bibles, books ... I just delete these emails and put them into SPAM on computer so they won't be delivered again to my sight.
As we go forward, maybe we can view some effectual fervent prayers of righteous men and women ... there are probably a few of those out there.
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Heb. 11: 6 ... But without faith it is impossible to please HIM: for he that cometh to God must believe that HE is, and that HE is a rewarder of them that diligently seek HIM.
To have faith to pray, it might be helpful to focus on the following instruction:
Phil. 4 ... Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 7And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Often when there is a problem, we, as humans, want to pick up the phone and tell other humans our problem. The person we talk with might care about us and our problem. But that person may not be able to help us with the problem.
(We end up dumping our problem on others this way as we try to make them our "god".)
Instead, why don't we, who profess to know God, pray?
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A woman in our little church group moved from Houston to Lubbock, TX, where I live. She called me one day asking me if I would go with her to hunt a light fixture which she could put above her dining room table. I told her I would meet her at the home design store.
As I drove to the store, I prayed: Please, God, help us find the right fixture ... quickly ... so it won't take a lot of effort.
The minute we stepped inside the building, I saw the fixture that would work. I let Sandra look around the store before I spoke. Then she bought the fixture.
Later I asked her if she prayed before going to look for the fixture.
She replied: "No ... I knew you would."
My faith is in God and her faith was in me.
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This same woman told me something I have no memory of. When she lived in Houston, she was very concerned that her elderly father would be a burden on her. She called me and asked me to pray. (I'm sure she did but I don't remember this and it is hard for me to imagine today that I would pray over such a thing but I was more fleshly then, I think.)
She said I prayed that her dad not be a burden to her and the next week or so he died.
Again, her faith was in me.
This eventually led to my having to stay away from her, plus she is very twisted and grieves me when she tries to talk, especially if she talks about religious things.
I can't stand it.
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If we walk "in the light" we have fellowship one with another ... (I Jn. 1) ... but if our light is darkness, how great is that darkness, says Jesus ... the godly can't stand the darkness. If godly tried to walk with them in darkness, then godly would turn dark.
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Pam Padgett, a person in our little church group, had a very serious problem when she was in college. She talked with God about the problem and she made a request to God. God resolved her problem but God did not resolve the problem the way she requested. God had a better way to take care of the problem.
Here is the story:
Pam says ... Many years ago when I first started going to college God showed Himself strong on my behalf. My older sister had been at college two years when I started attending the same school. She dated a man who was a member of a fraternity, and she had become a member of the fraternity's "women's auxiliary", assisting with fraternity social functions. She was very excited for me to join the social circles she was in, and especially wanted me to meet members of the fraternity.
The first week of school my sister invited me to go to a student bar where many of the fraternity guys gathered on Thursday nights. I went, but found what was going on there to be so bad (lewdness, drunkenness) that I was unable to stay and walked back to the dormitory.
A week or so later my sister asked if I'd go to an outdoor luau with one of the freshmen pledges at the fraternity. The luau site was about 20 miles away near a river, and there would be a campfire. The setting was very appealing to me, plus I was excited about having a date, and I agreed to go.
Then, a few days before the luau, my sister told me that arrangements had been made for one of the other fraternity guys to take me to the luau because my date would be spending the day at the luau site building a hut for us ... a young man I had never even met was building a hut "for us"!
Suddenly the reality of this luau became very clear to me. This was not going to be people sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows. The lewdness and drunkenness I had seen at the student bar was probably mild compared to what would be going on at this luau ... and I wouldn't be able to walk home.
I told my sister that I couldn't go along with this and did not want to go, but she kept insisting that it was too late for me to back out, that it was too late for this guy to find another date.
I turned very strongly to God, asking Him to somehow get me out of this situation.
There seemed no way out.
At one point I asked God to let me have appendicitis, preferring to be in a hospital having surgery than to go to this luau.
The morning of the luau I woke up and checked to see if I might have any pain that would indicate appendicitis, and was disappointed that I felt fine.
I kept praying for God to somehow work this out. Time was really running out! When I looked outside, it was raining a little, but not much. However, the rain became heavier and heavier as the day went on.
Around 2 pm I received a call from the fraternity guy who planned to take me to the luau site. He told me how sorry he was to have to tell me this, but the luau had to be cancelled.
The luau site had been totally flooded, washing away all the huts that had been built, which would include the hut my date had built for us.
He told me how long the luau had been held at this same site (many years) and, although there had been rain at times in the past, nothing like this had ever happened before, flooding and causing the luau to be cancelled.
I rejoiced, knowing that God had delivered me.