Thoughts From Teresa

Today's lesson is coming out a little late in the day because I just got back speaking at a healing conference in Kentucky. I was so busy over with the conference the weekend that I did not have a chance to start writing today's lesson until after my plane landed and I got home in the afternoon.

The conference went really well and God showed up with real power. He had given me a set of objectives for this conference, and God seemed to meet every one of them. We saw physical healings, we saw impartation, we even had angels show up at the conference. And the Lord's presence came in a tangible way during some of the worship. I felt really good about all the things God did there. I think that part of the reason things went so well was because this conference was covered in intercession. And that intercession yielded several neat answers to prayer. Some of them were answers to seemingly large requests and others were answers to seemingly minor ones.

As intercessors, we tend to bring all different sorts of levels of prayer requests to God. We should expect Him to answer all of our prayers, providing that we are praying in accord with His will and purposes. But sometimes we find it easier to trust Him for the really big ones or for the ones that seem important. Sometimes it is not as easy to trust God to answer the seemingly smaller requests. But we need to remember that God is a God who answers prayer on all levels.

God want us to know that He is a God who does answer prayer, just like Jesus said in John 14:13-14:

13whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.

God want us to know that He is a God who does answer prayer, just like Jesus So what I'd like to do is to share two prayer requests associated with this healing conference and how God answered them. One of the requests sounds big and the other sounds trivial, but God managed to handle both of them.

God want us to know that He is a God who does answer prayer, just like Jesus I think God wants us to know that none of our requests are too big for the Him to handle and none of them are too small for Him to bother with...

Prayer 1 - God, Please Change The Weather!

The conference schedule included morning and afternoon training sessions on Friday and Saturday. It also included two healing services on Saturday and Sunday evenings. The evening healing services were open to the public, so that anyone from the community could come for healing prayer.

I checked the weather report on the internet shortly before I left for Kentucky. It said that the weather would be nice on day one of our conference, but we should expect a bad thunderstorm on Saturday evening. The problem with a thunderstorm is that it is nasty weather to go out in, particularly if you are not feeling well. So we did not want to have the thunder storm interfere with our first healing service.

After I read the weather prediction on the internet, I sent a prayer request to the group of intercessors who are committed to pray regularly for the GodSpeak ministry:

I heard there will be thunderstorms the night of our first healing meeting... so please pray for God to turn the weather so it doesn't keep sick people away from coming to the meetings to be healed.

I love giving requests to this group of intercessors because they usually get answers very quickly. And guess what? God answered that prayer! The thunder storm came in a day early (on Friday night instead of Saturday)! Since we had not scheduled an evening meeting on Friday, so the storm did not interfere with anything.

In addition, the weatherman had predicted that it would rain on/off all day Saturday. But guess what? God fixed that as well. It ended up not raining on Saturday at all!

Now, it wasn't really a surprise to me that God answered this prayer request. I knew that God had sent me to do these meetings and I felt they were important to His purposes for that area. So I pretty much expected Him to answer it.

But there was another request related to this trip that seemed rather trivial by comparison. And I was a bit surprised that God answered that one....

Prayer 2 - Traveling Grace And A Good Seat

Let me share a tad of background. The flight from California to Kentucky was not a very nice one. The man who sat next to me must have weighted close to 300 pounds and he did not fit in his seat, so he took about 1/3 of mine as well. He would just lean his large body over mine, covering about 1/3 of my body and pressing his back and shoulder into some private parts of a lady's anatomy, as well as covering my shoulder and arm. It really bothered me.

At first, I thought he was just getting settled, so I did not say anything right away. I expected him to get settled and then move off of me. But five minutes went by and he did not show any sign of adjusting his position. Then it got worse. He decided the arm rest between our seats was not wide enough and ended up putting his arm and hand over half of my left thigh. At that point I said, as politely as I could, "Excuse me, but it makes me very uncomfortable when you lean over me that much."

His adult daughter, sitting in the row behind us, began to make several rude remarks in response. So I tried to politely explain that he was leaning over me more than he realized, pressing his shoulder into my breast and his arm into the middle of my thigh, and it made me uncomfortable for a man that I did not know to be touching those parts of my body. The rude remarks got ruder, but the man temporarily adjusted his position to stop leaning over me so much.

However, as soon as we took off, he began pressing against my body again, even harder than before. I took a thin notebook and put it between myself and him so that he was pressing against the notebook instead of touching my body directly. I wanted to change seats but none were available, every seat on the flight was taken. He pressed against the thin notebook so hard that it gave me some bruises and it hurt. I did not enjoy that flight very much.

I had stayed as a houseguest in a nice couple's home. Just before I left for the airport, my host told me that the plane would fly against the jet stream on the way home, so the flight would take an hour longer. The comment about the flight brought back memories of my unpleasant flight out, and I assumed the plane would be just as crowded on the way home. I told my hosts what had happened on the way out and how I was not looking forward to the flight back. So Audie (the husband) prayed over me that God would give me travel mercy and a comfortable fight home. Given my experience on the way out, I really did not expect God to answer that prayer. I mentally braced myself for another crowded and uncomfortable flight.

But you know what, God did answer that prayer!

As I boarded the plane, I asked the stewardess if this was another totally full flight. She said, "No, it is only 2/3 full." That meant that pretty much all of us had an empty seat between the window and aisle seats. The flight home turned out to be very comfortable and passed without a single unpleasant incident.

In fact, I spent the entire 5 hour flight home listening to bible CDs (the gospel of John) and praying. And during that time, God asked me why I was surprised that He answered Audie's prayer for a comfortable flight. His question took me by surprise, and it took me a while to figure out what the answer was. I finally realized that I had assumed the request for me to have a comfortable flight home was not very important to God. It did not seem like my physical comfort had any significance to God's kingdom plans. So I assumed that He would not bother to answer that prayer.

But that was "wrong thinking" on my part. God began to show me that I had a tendency to discredit certain prayers in my thinking, assuming they were not as important to Him as other requests. And God did not like me thinking that way. He told me that we should always pray with expectancy that He is going to hear and answer our prayer, because He is a God who answers prayer!