Recently my husband and I were pleased to attend a 60th birthday party for a godly man that we know. At the party, friends and family were asked to share funny stories about him–and many did. But many also couldn’t resist sharing how God has used this man in their life somehow. I sat and listened and laughed and smiled at the funny stories and the wonderful testimonies until the end, when I was struck with a revelation of my own.
Many years ago, from about 2005-2010, when my husband was fighting God and fighting hard–I prayed. I prayed many, many things for my husband. One of them was the God would bring many, many godly men into his life, surrounding him with good men who would point him, draw him, and challenge him to grow closer to God.
Not that my husband didn’t have any good, Christian, godly friends. He did have a couple. And not that his other friends weren’t good men, they were. But my husband, introvert and loner that he is, fighting God as he was, did not have a circle of men in his life to give him godly, wise counsel, and I knew he needed that.
We ALL need that.
And I’m not saying the circle needs to be a huge circle–we just need a network, a handful of wise counselors, a group of close friends. I wasn’t trying to “extrovert” my introverted husband, but I prayed that God would bring men into his life that would fill this need.
And suddenly at this birthday party, I remembered that prayer, and my eyes were opened to how ABUNDANTLY God has answered it. Of course, I already knew that God has given him more good Christian friends, and I do remember noticing and commenting when he started having more friendships with godly men. But I hadn’t really slowed down and thought about just HOW MANY solid, godly, wonderful men God has brought into my husband’s life.
Over the past five years or so, God has surrounded him at work with many good Christian friends. My husband has made numerous friendships with other men he met through his seminary classes. And he has drawn my husband closer to the leadership team and the other men in our church. What started as a few good friends, then a handful of good men, has become well over a dozen. More than that if you count all the various levels of friendship one can have.
God has literally surrounded my husband with good, Christian influences–which is exactly what I had prayed for so many times.
Sitting at that birthday party, I realized how literally, how abundantly, how completely, God answered that prayer. And I know He deserves all the credit. I felt at once humbled, awed, and so overwhelmingly loved and blessed by our Almighty God. Never had I imagined the full extent of this answered prayer. Once again, God goes above and beyond.
What I want you to take away from this,…is not how blessed I am, or how great my husband’s friends are, or how wonderful my husband has become.
What I want you to take away is this:
– GOD CHANGES PEOPLE’S HEARTS
– GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS
– GOD IS AMAZING
– GOD IS FAITHFUL
Maybe you are in your own trenches, whispering your own fervent prayer. Maybe you don’t see an answer in the foreseeable future. I can’t tell you what God has in store for you, or what His answer will be. But I KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that if you trust God to take care of you, HE WILL. He is faithful and good and amazing.
Not all of my prayers have been answered the way I thought they would be. Some answers were even better than I expected, some were not what I expected at all. We have been through good times AND hard ones. But God has been with us through it all.
And this I know: God answers prayer. So keep praying, child of God, keep praying.
