Post by JEM on Apr 28, 2009 2:28:48 GMT
IF THERE IS NO GOD, WHO ANSWERS PRAYER?
*************************************************************
Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins and some friends have begun advertising on some London buses. “There’s probably is no God”
For an atheist that is a bit weak, and shows he has just an element of doubt. That is wise in a universe so large, as God could be hiding just around any corner and Richard is a rather unobtrusive gentleman .
JACK LUCKEY'S STORY
***********************************
Jack Luckey had heard it all before. Raised in a godly home in the shadow of a Christian College, he knew all the answers.
By the time he was a teenager he had heard hundreds of sermons and altar calls; he was no longer touched by even the most fervent appeals. Then he rebelled, trying to forget all about God. He did not need any of that stuff - prayer. faith, Bible, the whole Christianity thing, “ when I was a child I thought like a child, now I am a man I will think like a man” was his motto. The whole concept of God seemed irrational to him. Christianity just didn’t make sense.
Jack married Camilla , a college friend who had also been raised in a church but had drifted a long way from it. Eight years later she started going to church services again, reading her Bible, and praying for her husband.
His strident atheism was being tested. He could stand it.
For two years she prayed but he seemed as resistant as ever. As a dutiful husband he escorted her to communion service, and when folk stood up to go forward for communion he got up too, walked forwards and then turned left out of the church to light up a cigarette.
He started saying to himself “If there really is a God, he would.....” In other words God would do things. He felt that he was confirming his atheism by noting all the occasions God could have done something but didn’t.
Yet that possibility actually began opening him up to the idea of an active God. in a way it was a challenge...and God took it.
One Saturday in 1982 Camilla lost her bible and jack helped her look for it They scoured the house. No bible. Jack went into the back yard saying to himself “If there is a God and if he really cares for Camilla, he would show him where the “blankety blank” Bible is! At that point he kicked a bucket in the back yard out of his way and out flew the Bible. What would her Bible be doing in a bucket in the back yard.?
The next day he went to church with her with the bible in a bucket still in his mind. He planned to go forward with Camilla and turn left as usual
For some reason unbeknown to him an old hymn came into his mind “Just as I am”. It was sung in his home church when people went forward to register their faith in Christ. The people in this Episcopalian Church had probably never heard it. It has never been here played to his knowledge at these services.
Jack reasoned to himself They should sing “Just as I am”, as they go up to receive communion” If that unlikely thing happened I would take communion” . Moments later as he reached the junction where he turned left out of the church the church musicians began to play “Just as I am without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me.”
Jack was stunned rigid. He turned right and for the first time since he was a boy he received communion.
We come to the next day. Each day he rode by bicycle to his work in Washington DC from his home in Alexandria, Virginia. But summer time had just ended. “daylight saving” as they called it in America, and he had forgotten. It was time to ride home. He turned on his bicycle lamp and nothing happened. . Traffic was dangerously heavy. He could not drive home without lights, so he prayed “God if you really love me you will give me light”. He flicked on the bicycle light again and it glowed brightly and he had light all the way home until he reached his back yard and the light went out, and would not come on again.
It was the kind of light that as you peddled it ran a generator that produced the power that provided the light.
He look at more closely to and remembered that months before it would not work properly. Something had broken, he had taken it all to pieces intending to get the spare part and mend it. Without the spare part it would not work, and the spare part was not there. The lamp simply was not connected.
There was no way he could generate that power but God had provided him light all the way home. He said “Here was the God of the universe, who took the time to show me he was there, when I was such a stubborn jerk.”
Jim Cymbala’s Story
**************************
Jim Cymbala preached at Brooklyn Tabernacle Church on the first Sunday he became it’s Pastor and only 15 people turned up to listen. In the middle of his sermon a pew split in half spilling five of them on the floor.
Jim was sure he was not cut out to be a pastor. He was much more at home as a basket ball player and had been Team Captain of his University of Rhode Island team taking them to the North Carolina Athletic Association ( I think that is what NCAA means ) National Tournament in his senior year.
He had not trained to be a pastor, but his father in law had asked him to come and preach at this downtown church in an area where white folk would not dare venture. He was told that they needed help, and he could see that they desperately needed help. Not sure what he was getting into he agreed to try.
Before his first month was up he discovered that they had a mortgage to pay. They needed $232, and they only had $160. On the Monday he prayed “Lord you have to help me. I don’t know much -- but I do know that we have to pay this mortgage . In simple faith he went to the church on Tuesday and checked the letter box and the post box on the other side of the street, but there was no mail. Nothing there. Discouraged he went back to the church. He unlocked the door and saw a plain white envelope laying on the floor of the foyer. Inside he found 2 fifty dollar bank notes. Enough to pay the mortgage. He never discovered where they came from.
As he and his wife Carol continued to minister at the Church they saw some small growth but Cymbala was getting discouraged. Soon it became the same old thing every week. Some Sundays he did not want to show up for the services himself.
While recuperating from a bad cold and a lingering cough he prayed “ Lord I have no idea how to be a successful Pastor”. Then it seemed to him that the Lord interrupted him and told him that if he and his wife would build the
Church on prayer they would lack for nothing.
This struggling little Brooklyn Tabernacle would have to be built on prayer.
On his first Sunday back in the pulpit Cymbala told the congregation “From this day on the prayer meeting will be the barometer of our church
Soon people of all races and all walks of life started coming to the church. In 1977 they could not all get in the building so they moved to the YMCA auditorium that seated 500. Two years on in 1979 they had to move again to a theatre on Flatbush Avenue searing 1400, which they bought, and added additional services and other branch ministries.
Carol began to lead and accompany the choir although she could not read music. Most Choir members could not read music either
Yet before long the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir were putting on concerts at the Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall and the Madison Square Gardens, and the choir recordings became best sellers.
What is the secret of the Church’s success? One of their songs has the line “ If you can use anything LORD you can use me.
Jim Cabella admitted that, that is the key. He admitted his own clue-lessness and God’s answer even of the prayer he did not even utter providing guidance needed to do God’s work in that community. l
*************************************************************
Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins and some friends have begun advertising on some London buses. “There’s probably is no God”
For an atheist that is a bit weak, and shows he has just an element of doubt. That is wise in a universe so large, as God could be hiding just around any corner and Richard is a rather unobtrusive gentleman .
JACK LUCKEY'S STORY
***********************************
Jack Luckey had heard it all before. Raised in a godly home in the shadow of a Christian College, he knew all the answers.
By the time he was a teenager he had heard hundreds of sermons and altar calls; he was no longer touched by even the most fervent appeals. Then he rebelled, trying to forget all about God. He did not need any of that stuff - prayer. faith, Bible, the whole Christianity thing, “ when I was a child I thought like a child, now I am a man I will think like a man” was his motto. The whole concept of God seemed irrational to him. Christianity just didn’t make sense.
Jack married Camilla , a college friend who had also been raised in a church but had drifted a long way from it. Eight years later she started going to church services again, reading her Bible, and praying for her husband.
His strident atheism was being tested. He could stand it.
For two years she prayed but he seemed as resistant as ever. As a dutiful husband he escorted her to communion service, and when folk stood up to go forward for communion he got up too, walked forwards and then turned left out of the church to light up a cigarette.
He started saying to himself “If there really is a God, he would.....” In other words God would do things. He felt that he was confirming his atheism by noting all the occasions God could have done something but didn’t.
Yet that possibility actually began opening him up to the idea of an active God. in a way it was a challenge...and God took it.
One Saturday in 1982 Camilla lost her bible and jack helped her look for it They scoured the house. No bible. Jack went into the back yard saying to himself “If there is a God and if he really cares for Camilla, he would show him where the “blankety blank” Bible is! At that point he kicked a bucket in the back yard out of his way and out flew the Bible. What would her Bible be doing in a bucket in the back yard.?
The next day he went to church with her with the bible in a bucket still in his mind. He planned to go forward with Camilla and turn left as usual
For some reason unbeknown to him an old hymn came into his mind “Just as I am”. It was sung in his home church when people went forward to register their faith in Christ. The people in this Episcopalian Church had probably never heard it. It has never been here played to his knowledge at these services.
Jack reasoned to himself They should sing “Just as I am”, as they go up to receive communion” If that unlikely thing happened I would take communion” . Moments later as he reached the junction where he turned left out of the church the church musicians began to play “Just as I am without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me.”
Jack was stunned rigid. He turned right and for the first time since he was a boy he received communion.
We come to the next day. Each day he rode by bicycle to his work in Washington DC from his home in Alexandria, Virginia. But summer time had just ended. “daylight saving” as they called it in America, and he had forgotten. It was time to ride home. He turned on his bicycle lamp and nothing happened. . Traffic was dangerously heavy. He could not drive home without lights, so he prayed “God if you really love me you will give me light”. He flicked on the bicycle light again and it glowed brightly and he had light all the way home until he reached his back yard and the light went out, and would not come on again.
It was the kind of light that as you peddled it ran a generator that produced the power that provided the light.
He look at more closely to and remembered that months before it would not work properly. Something had broken, he had taken it all to pieces intending to get the spare part and mend it. Without the spare part it would not work, and the spare part was not there. The lamp simply was not connected.
There was no way he could generate that power but God had provided him light all the way home. He said “Here was the God of the universe, who took the time to show me he was there, when I was such a stubborn jerk.”
Jim Cymbala’s Story
**************************
Jim Cymbala preached at Brooklyn Tabernacle Church on the first Sunday he became it’s Pastor and only 15 people turned up to listen. In the middle of his sermon a pew split in half spilling five of them on the floor.
Jim was sure he was not cut out to be a pastor. He was much more at home as a basket ball player and had been Team Captain of his University of Rhode Island team taking them to the North Carolina Athletic Association ( I think that is what NCAA means ) National Tournament in his senior year.
He had not trained to be a pastor, but his father in law had asked him to come and preach at this downtown church in an area where white folk would not dare venture. He was told that they needed help, and he could see that they desperately needed help. Not sure what he was getting into he agreed to try.
Before his first month was up he discovered that they had a mortgage to pay. They needed $232, and they only had $160. On the Monday he prayed “Lord you have to help me. I don’t know much -- but I do know that we have to pay this mortgage . In simple faith he went to the church on Tuesday and checked the letter box and the post box on the other side of the street, but there was no mail. Nothing there. Discouraged he went back to the church. He unlocked the door and saw a plain white envelope laying on the floor of the foyer. Inside he found 2 fifty dollar bank notes. Enough to pay the mortgage. He never discovered where they came from.
As he and his wife Carol continued to minister at the Church they saw some small growth but Cymbala was getting discouraged. Soon it became the same old thing every week. Some Sundays he did not want to show up for the services himself.
While recuperating from a bad cold and a lingering cough he prayed “ Lord I have no idea how to be a successful Pastor”. Then it seemed to him that the Lord interrupted him and told him that if he and his wife would build the
Church on prayer they would lack for nothing.
This struggling little Brooklyn Tabernacle would have to be built on prayer.
On his first Sunday back in the pulpit Cymbala told the congregation “From this day on the prayer meeting will be the barometer of our church
Soon people of all races and all walks of life started coming to the church. In 1977 they could not all get in the building so they moved to the YMCA auditorium that seated 500. Two years on in 1979 they had to move again to a theatre on Flatbush Avenue searing 1400, which they bought, and added additional services and other branch ministries.
Carol began to lead and accompany the choir although she could not read music. Most Choir members could not read music either
Yet before long the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir were putting on concerts at the Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall and the Madison Square Gardens, and the choir recordings became best sellers.
What is the secret of the Church’s success? One of their songs has the line “ If you can use anything LORD you can use me.
Jim Cabella admitted that, that is the key. He admitted his own clue-lessness and God’s answer even of the prayer he did not even utter providing guidance needed to do God’s work in that community. l