God Answers Prayer

Dr. Beverly Carradine is one of his books relates the hard struggle he endured financially in the first year of his ministry.  He saw the brook get smaller every day and finally, after living on bread alone for several days, saw even that give out.  The weather was bitter cold, and h is coal supply was nearly exhausted.  As the town in which he lived was not on his circuit, there was no one to look to or call on.  He had well-to-do men on his circuit, but they, in the rush of their own life and business, had overlooked him.  What would God do in this case?

At four o\’clock in the afternoon, the young preacher, with perfectly empty storeroom in h is house, knelt down before the stove and cast in his last lump of coal.  Without rising, he dropped his face in his hands and sobbed.  With tears in his eyes he said, \”Lord, I will trust you.\”

Suddenly there was a knock at the front door of the cottage home, and on the doorstep stood a poor farmer\’s boy.  He said with a kind voice but in a bashful way, \”I\’ve just sold the bale of cotton I made this year, and have brought you four dollars.  I have heard you preach several times, and I want to help you.\”

Doubtless, the young man wondered as he turned away why the preacher\’s voice was so broken as he thanked him and why tears should fall at such a small present.

God still answers prayer, and He still uses His children, too.

– From an unpublished collection of illustrations by Troy Moore