"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." (James 5:16)
"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish , and it will be given to you." (John 15:7)
I wanted to share a few more vignettes of answered prayer from my family and then a few from the church.
John's asthma attack- when John was one and a half, he had a pretty bad fever and a hard time breathing. He had asthma but we didn't know it. On the night his fever was so high, we brought him into our bed (we never did this- my wife, Kay, and I had a rule about not allowing children in bed with us) and gave him children's Tylenol. We had been praying for him, but we especially prayed then. An hour or less after he was in bed with us- he sat up and pointed to what he called "Rebekah" (his sister 3 years older than he was). Kay and I both woke up. I saw a light- like a halo. Kay saw a person that she described as an angel. We both felt God was waking us up to do something. Kay took John to the hospital ER while I stayed with the other two children. Kay called back to say his fever was very high but had gone down with medicine. He also had very, very low oxygen- to a dangerous level. The doctor and the nurse agreed that if we had waited much longer (an hour even), he would have had brain damage. We all three consider this an answer to prayer. He was officially diagnosed with asthma (probably aggravated by his peanut allergy along with some allergens in that area. For the next several years John used an inhaler. Now he has outgrown his asthma (except when he has eaten or smelled peanuts).
Sarah's bee problem. In the mountains around Asheville there were a lot of yellow jacket wasps. Sarah was stung and her arm and face swelled. She had a mile anaphylactic reaction to the yellow jacket's sting. The doctor said it would get worse and was dangerous- and to always have an epinephrine injector with her.
We had an old pop up camper. It was heavy and often our station wagon would overheat trying to pull it up the mountains when we went camping. One time we were going up the mountains camping and the car overheated. We pulled over on the emergency lane- the car cut off , and we waited for the car radiator to cool down. A yellow jacket got inside the car. Then another. There was nothing we could do- nowhere to go. It particularly started attacking Sarah. It landed on her arm- it stung her. We prayed and Sarah was fine.
Another time Sarah was going in college on a mission trip to Haiti. After she arrived they realized she had forgotten her epi-pen and the mission director was going to send her home at our expense. Nowhere on the island was there any epi-pens- and there were lots of yellow jackets. We all prayed (and though she was a little isolated) she was fine.
Over the years, I have seen many obvious answered prayers- and some unanswered. If every prayer was answered, we would yawn at the power of God and expect it. But here are a couple. I am going by my memory on these, and some of the details may be off a little.
Ruth Palassis- this was in the Lake Murray Presbyterian Church. Ruth had taught with my wife, Kay. She was a well-loved sweet person with faith. She had terrible headaches and was diagnosed with "Glioblastoma" a malignant fast-growing brain tumor. This is the kind of cancer that Teddy Kennedy and John McCain died of. The doctor and family sent her to Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC. Teddy Kennedy also went there a year or two after her. They performed major brain surgery on her. She was in the hospital for several months. The average survival rate for patients with surgery is 15-18 months with only 5-7% surviving more than five years. Ruth had an amazing positive attitude and immersed herself in prayer. After her surgery they did some radiation. She did not lose any major body function, but she lost some vocabulary memory and had to re-learn to speak. She survived 15 years. The doctors were astonished. She was astonished. They asked her to talk to other glioblastoma patients to encourage them. She did and she always encouraged them to pray and think positively about beating this. She did have three gamma knife surgeries to keep the tumor at bay. They could not get the full tumor for it went down into the brain stem. They had to keep going in and cutting it back. They put a removable plate on her skull to go in. But eventually they thought the gamma knife got it all, and for several years no surgery was necessary. She died later of skin cancer on the neck. They told her it was easily treated compared to the glioblastoma- but she was tired of fighting (in her late 70s) and just wanted it to take its course (she had also had breast cancer years before). She was at peace with her Lord and was ready to go meet him in heaven. But everyone- doctors, Ruth, her husband Jim and I believed this was a true answer to prayer.
Mary LaFond. Mary was a retired nurse. She was a deacon in our church and was full of compassion. John had co-owned a nuclear engineering business and worked closely with the government. Mary had small seizures. She came forward to a service for the anointing with oil and prayer. Mary had a major seizure and was in ICU in Lexington Medical Center for six months plus. The doctors had suggested pulling the plug. There was no major brain activity. It was like the seizure had eaten up a part of her brain. The church prayed. The doctors suggested taking her off the ventilator. They did. But to everyone's surprise- including mine- she survived. But then she not only survived. She at first couldn't talk much- but she gained her ability to talk- then to walk back. She has lived another 12 years after all of this and is in her 80s now in a retirement home.
