Tuesday 8 May 2018

An unexpected answer to prayer

Richard Wurmbrand felt an unaccountable desire to visit a certain village in Romania.

He went and it was a visit that would change his life.

He had had a tough upbringing and rejected religion.

He was a Jew by birth but had become a convinced atheist.  Still, one day, he prayed to God and said that if the Lord was real, he had to prove it to young Wurmbrand.

At the same time, an old carpenter in a village high up in the mountains prayed to God, saying that he was old and sick but he did not want to die before seeing a Jew become a believer in Jesus because Jesus was a Jew.  He asked that God bring a Jew to his village and he would do his best to bring him to Christ.

In his book Tortured for Christ, Wurmband writes "something irresistible drew me to that village", one of 12,000 in Romania.

He met the carpenter who saw in Wurmbrand the answer to his prayer.  He gave the young man a Bible.

"As he told me some time later," says Wurmbrand, "he and his wife prayed for hours for my conversion and that of my wife."

"The Bible he gave me was written not so much in words, but in flames of love fired by his prayers.  I could barely read it.  I could only weep over it, comparing my bad life with the life of Jesus; my impurity with his righteousness; my hatred with his love - and he (Jesus) accepted me as one of his own."

Shortly after, Wurmbrand's wife became a believer.  They reached out to others and before long there was a new Lutheran church in Romania.

Wurmbrand and his wife later became part of the underground church in Romania during the Nazi occupation and later the Communist takeover.  He spent 14 years in a Communist prison suffering terribly for his faith.  Many Russians became believers as a result of his testimony.

When the young atheist prayed, he got an unexpected answer.  When the old carpenter prayed, he did not know how God would answer, but his faith was strong.

"The prayer of faith links man's petition to the power of God," writes Samuel Chadwick in The Path of Prayer.  "All men believe in the power of prayer to influence mind, develop character, and sanctify motive and will - but that is not all.  Prayer is force.  Prayer changes things."

Yes.  Prayer changes things.

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