The Happen Stance

How to Make Things Happen In Your Christian Life

K. Neill Foster

THAT'S WHAT THE country gospel song says - "Turn your radio on." And it means "Tune in to God for prayer." Some might doubt that any valuable spiritual truth could ever come through a song that the "gittar pickers" love. But this time they are wrong. A powerful - and profound - spiritual truth is entwined in that twangy tune!

The fact that man can speak to Almighty God through prayer and with his requests move the hand of Omnipotence has to be important.

And exciting. How well I recall having to leave home for an extended preaching tour when our little girl was just sixteen days old. She had already wrapped her tiny fingers around her daddy's heart.

I wasn't very far into the preaching tour before I began to think about the return trip. I was to finish the tour in New Brunswick before returning to my home in British Columbia. It would take me four long days on the train to reach home.

So while I was still in Ontario, an itinerant evangelist, still dependent upon freewill offerings, I prayed something like this: "Lord, if You will bring in $- in this church (1 specified the amount - it was more than 1 had ever received as an evangelist anywhere), 1 will know it is Your will for me to fly home when the tour is over."

When the church presented its offering, it was larger than any I had ever received, even larger than the amount for which 1 had been praying. I reserved my plane ticket for the Monday following the conclusion of my ministry in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Before I began my closing series in Saint John, I prayed about the amount of the offering there, too. However, when it was presented it was $61 short of the amount for which I had prayed.

Then I wondered. Should I take the long train ride after all? Or should I fly as planned? The decision wasn't hard because I wanted very much to get home!

Early that June morning in 1964 I flew out of Saint John, New Brunswick. The Atlantic glistened beneath me. Montreal. Toronto. Then to Vancouver and the Pacific Ocean, all in the same day. I caught the early afternoon flight to Kamloops - and to my waiting family. My wife and son and our baby were there to meet me; it was great to be home.

My wife then said, "Guess what!-The doctor returned one-half of the fee paid when Donna was born." The fee had been $125.00. The figures spun through my mind. One half of $125.00 is $62.50. I was $61.00 short on my tour. "Oh, Praise the Lord!"

Believe me, in the days after that event, anyone who got near me was likely to hear my story of an exciting answer to prayer!

God really does answer prayer and it is absolutely exhilarating to catch His thought, pray it back to Him, and then see the answer.

The Scriptures say a great deal about prayer and whole libraries could be written about it. So it is difficult to say something in one chapter that will be both adequate and helpful, but I will try.

DESPERATION PRAYERS

First, there are desperation prayers. In Exodus 32:32 Moses' prayer is recorded. In great agony he asked God to forgive the people or blot his name out of His book. Jehovah answered. Though Israel was punished, she was forgiven.

I believe today God still responds to desperation prayers. There have been a few times through the years when God has given me this kind of prayer. I suppose some people would call it "intercessory" prayer. But when God gives this kind of prayer to His children, the results are very often miraculous and explosive.

In 1968, after a year in Texas studying Spanish and another year in Puerto Rico stabilizing ourselves in the language, we returned to Alberta. We wanted to settle in Beaverlodge, but no houses seemed to be available. We went to our summer convention still not knowing where we would live in the fall.

Then we received news of an accident. Mr. and Mrs. Chris Sylvester, friends of my parents for many years, had been instantly killed in a train-camper accident.

Sometime later another fact dawned. Their house in Beaverlodge, with all its furniture, was available. Not wishing to appear indecently in haste and yet needing a house very much, we approached the family. I bought the house from the estate, even though my wife disagreed.

Then I left for some special meetings and the trouble began. The devil jumped on my back and said, "You have made a mistake. You are out of God's will. Something will happen to your family. You have the wrong house. You are not saved." Never had I faced such an assault from the enemy.

I canceled the deal. Then I changed my mind again. And again. And again. It was terrible. Finally, my pastor, Rev. Ches House, phoned. "Neill, you have got to stop this vacillating." (Part of the uncertainty, I am sure, was the lack of agreement between my wife and me. Now she loves the house and will hardly entertain the thought of moving out.)

Victory came when Pastor Keith Salway and I went to his little church at Alberta Beach. We prayed throughout a whole afternoon. It was desperation prayer. But the satanic assault was broken. I was freed from oppression.

And at the time of this writing we are still in that house. We have enjoyed it very much. It became ours through desperation prayer.

JEHOVAH-RAPHA

Prayer for healing is another facet of this beautiful weapon God has given His children. Early in the Scriptures, Abraham prayed for the healing of Abimelech's household. Later, Jehovah's name is revealed: Jehovah-Rapha-"1 am the Lord that healeth thee" (Exod. 15:26).

It is God's nature to heal the sick. The apostles and our Lord Himself prayed for the sick. And James made clear, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick" (James 5:15).

For a long time I could not dare to believe God wanted to heal people. In Bible college days I was required to preach a sermon on divine healing and I produced a masterpiece of evasion. No modernist or liberal could have done any better.

Then, as my ministry later unfolded, I began to dare to begin to hope to believe that God wanted to heal people. And healings began to take place.

But not everyone was healed and I would be lying to say I wasn't disturbed.

Later, a pastor friend of mine helped me very much. He said, "It is God's highest will to heal." His statement became my personal conviction, and is basic to this day to my faith when I am asked to pray for the healing of others. Healings will not take place if we are equivocating. If we always preface our prayers with "If it be thy will. . . ," nothing will happen.

At the same time, God permits sickness and suffering. And He uses these too. There seems to me to be a happy middle ground which allows a Christian to joyfully pray for healing and to believe that God really delights to heal, while at the same time recognizing the fact that suffering can and does come.

Often, the secret of praying for healing is to catch God's thought and pray it back again.

When I was a young pastor, a lady came to me, showed me her eczema-covered hands, and asked for prayer. Since the following day was Sunday and Communion was to be served with the elders of the church present, I gave her a book to read and suggested she respond the next day when prayer was to be offered.

She did. And the elders and I anointed her with oil and prayed according to what the Bible says in James chapter five. When opportunity to testify was given, she stood and rather excitedly waved her hands before the people. "Look at my hands, look at my hands!" she exuded.

Unconverted young people from the choir crowded around to see what had happened. Her hands had been perfectly cleansed. The next day she showed them to me. They were covered with clean new skin like that of a baby.

One saintly little lady, weighing only ninety pounds or so but a real heavyweight in the prayer ring, told me the next day, "You know, I couldn't sleep all last night. I have never seen anything like that."

Neither had I. But I am sure prayer in God's will was the key.

ASSASSINATION BY PRAYER?

Another kind of prayer is that which can be directed against evil men. Isaiah sent word to King Hezekiah that God had heard the prayer he had prayed against Sennacherib, King of Assyria.

Subsequently, 185,000 Assyrians were slain and later still Sennacherib was assassinated by his own sons. I believe there may be times in our lives when, through prayer, we may find it necessary to wage holy war on wicked men. National and international events can be influenced by prayer. I am not, of course, suggesting we pray for assassinations, but men can rise and fall in other ways. Christians have a potential for spiritual event-control through prayer. It is the "happen stance."

Salvador Allende was the Marxist president of Chile. When I visited that country just a few weeks after the military coup that overturned his regime, I discovered that many believers felt Chile had been saved by an act of God. In one church, the young people had been praying for a year for national deliverance. A Communist bloodbath had been stopped in the nick of time.

Now I am not necessarily suggesting that Christians organize a "pray-against campaign" to unseat wicked rulers and politicians. But the time may come when such steps are necessary. At the same time, if Christians can catch God's thoughts in such a matter, they may discover that God wants to influence national and international events through them.

(For some fascinating sidelights of World War II, the story of Rees Howells and his prayers is recommended reading.¹)

DON'T PRAY?

Another illuminating thing about prayer is that sometimes it is the wrong thing to do. On three occasions the Lord told Jeremiah not to pray for the people (Jer. 7:16, 11:14, 14:11). Evidently, judgment was imminent. In the New Testament, John also talks about a time when prayer is inappropriate (1 John 5:16). Many believe such a no-prayer situation indicates that a line of no return has been passed and prayer is not to be offered.

There may be other situations, too, where prayer is not really what God wants. I think this is especially true in the use of Christian authority in deliverances, which I will discuss in later pages. For example, if God wants you to use a spoken command and you pray that the Lord will do the work, you are "mis-praying." God in His grace may deliver the victim anyway. But again, catching God's thought exactly might eliminate the prayer completely and replace it with an authoritative, spoken command.

CATCH GOD'S THOUGHT

I have been suggesting throughout this chapter that prayer is catching God's thought. Why is this so? First, we have an infirmity in prayer. "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God" (Rom. 8:26,27).

Paul said, "We know not what we should pray for as we ought." The proof of our problem is that many, many of our prayers are not answered.

In this Romans passage, I see two Intercessors acting on our behalf: first, the Holy Spirit ("The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us") and second, Jesus Christ ("And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit").

A.B. Simpson had this to say:

 And so there is a divine and most perfect provision in the economy of grace by which the Holy Spirit adjusts our spirit into such harmony with God that we can catch his thought and send it back again, not merely as a human desire but as a divine prayer. True prayer, therefore, is not only the voice of man crying to God but the voice of God in man expressing the deepest needs of the human heart and conveying them to the throne in such a manner that the answer shall be assured.²

The heavenly Intercessors combine to reveal to us God's will. Once we know God's will we can pray with confidence. "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him" (1 John 5:14,15).

One of God's great men of the past said that the biggest difficulty in getting one's prayers answered is to discover God's will. After that, he believed, it is relatively simple to get the prayer answered.

BE WISE

So this whole ministry of prayer comes right back to the Holy Spirit and to Jesus Christ. Together they reveal to us the Father's will.

We are not to be unwise, but rather we are to understand the Lord's will. Paul taught that. And he also explained how: through the fullness of the Holy Spirit and through the indwelling fullness of Jesus Christ (Eph. 5:17,18).

We have come full circle. Prayer begins with our Lord Jesus Christ in the heart. When He is there, He simply says, "If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it."

Then He puts His thoughts in our hearts.

Turn your radio on! And the excitement begins!

Chapter 4