Day Five

Do you ever go through a dry spell when you feel you have lost God’s attention and he’s not listening to your prayers? It hurts when we think our prayers are just wasted effort and are floating into thin air. This is especially hard to understand when the prayers are about something time-sensitive or critical in nature. How can God ignore something so important? The following story is a great illustration of how God can be listening and recording our prayers even when we feel he has stepped away.

The title of this story is: “Please help me find her!”

I can mark the very day God opened my eyes. Once I said, "Yes" to God's call to develop and operate a recovery home for women and children, it seemed like the world immediately became more vivid and brilliant. The way I describe it is like going from sepia-tones to Technicolor. Do you remember the sepia toned crayons? Raw umber...burnt sienna...basically monochromatic tones of dull brown. That's how I would describe life outside God's will. It may be in color, but it's dull.

Once God opened my eyes in a different way to the world around me, I began to see everything more vividly - good things and bad. Miracles I witnessed became more brilliant, full of amazing color. My heart felt more deeply in all directions. However, the ugliness of the world also became more intense.

For instance, the unruly child in the store no longer looked like an annoying pest. He suddenly looked like a little boy who might be living in fear, perhaps unable to pay attention in school because he had so many grown-up problems to worry about – like food, shelter, and especially safety.

The messy car in the Wal-Mart parking lot no longer looked like it just needed a good cleaning. It was probably a temporary home for a family that was struggling.

The woman with a blank stare, gazing out the passenger window, was not bored. Her frozen expression was most likely a sign of hopelessness.

The man walking on the side of the road, dressed in clothes out of season, was not a hiker, but possibly a man who had just been released from jail, wearing whatever he had on when he was arrested. He was probably someone who had no one who could, or would, pick him up.

This brings me to something I saw in vivid color one day that unexpectedly turned into brilliant technicolor a year later.

One Saturday morning, I took a left out of my driveway. I rarely go that direction on the weekends, but this day I was looking for flowers for my porch and had spotted some in town the day before. When I reached a wide stretch of highway where there weren't any houses, I discovered a woman on the side of the road. She was pretty but showed signs of a rough life.

Right away, I noticed she was walking with a sense of desperation, so I slowed down to see if she needed help. But before I could reach her, an SUV came rushing from behind, swerved off the road in front of me, and skidded to a sudden stop right in front of this woman. She and the driver immediately began arguing. What's about to happen here?

I parked my car behind him and should have gotten the license number, but I was so concerned about this woman, I didn't think about it. He angrily waved for me to pass him, but I stayed put. Then, much to my surprise, the woman got in the car with him. What?

The driver made an angry U-turn and took off, slinging gravel. As I searched for a safer place to turn around, I looked in my rearview mirror just in time to see the passenger door fly open with the woman dangling out of the moving vehicle. The car swayed wildly down the road, and right before I lost sight of them, I saw the woman swing back inside.

I turned my vehicle around as quickly as I could and went searching for the car. In those few seconds, though, I lost them. I drove several miles down the road and was relieved to find a sheriff’s deputy checking out an abandoned car. "Thank goodness I found you. I need your help!"

After I explained what had just happened, he very calmly said, "How do you know this isn't just the first time they've had an argument?"

"Are you kidding me? What difference does that make?" The officer finally agreed to call it in, and I waited as he very patronizingly did so. But he was not willing to look for her. I drove off and called the sheriff's department myself. They assured me they would "send someone to check it out." Sure, you will.

After this, I could hardly go about flower shopping, so I drove all the way into the next town to try again. I walked into the police station and begged them to help me, even though the incident didn't happen in their district. I said, "Surely someone knows this guy because today can't be the first time he's done something like this. There's a woman in danger right now and we've got to do something!"

When I described the guy and the black SUV he was driving, the officer said he thought he might know who that was and assured me he would call the neighboring police and get someone to check it out. I believed him, at least more than I believed the last two guys, so I left feeling I had done all I could but was still not satisfied.

For the next few days, I traveled down all kinds of side country roads looking for this vehicle and worried about the pretty woman who disappeared with it. I told our staff what I witnessed, and we prayed for her. For an entire year, I thought of this desperate woman from time to time when I passed that same place in the road. I even followed a similar vehicle for several miles until I realized it was a different driver. I never forgot the woman and continued to pray for her.

A year after this event, we had a special Family Day at Blue Monarch. One of our newest residents had no family members visiting that day, so I sat on the sofa to get to know her. She began telling me how her former boyfriend’s domestic violence charges had just been moved to attempted murder because of how severely she was beaten. She described how he planned to throw her off a mountain bluff, but he shoved her out of a moving car instead, which badly injured her. In fact, her vision and hearing were impaired because she suffered so much damage to one side of her head.

"Wait,” I said. ”Did the two of you ever go outside of town toward my home?"

"Yes, he would take me out to remote places like that to fight."

I then asked if he drove a black SUV like the one I had seen that day. "Yeah, he does."

Oh, my goodness. This was the woman I had been looking for! I finally found her - on our sofa at Blue Monarch.

I was so excited and began anxiously telling her my side of the story on that day. I described how hard I tried to get help. It turns out, after my visit to the police station that day, she said someone called to warn the guy that a police report had been filed on him. Sadly, though, he didn't stop beating her. He simply looked for places no one would see them. Months later, he threw her from a moving vehicle, nearly killing her. So, I didn't really help her at all - at least not in the way I tried. However, God was helping her in a different way.

After we pieced our stories together, she became very tearful and said, "You wouldn't believe how hard I prayed for God to let someone see what was going on so they would intervene. And - you did. Someone did!"

In that powerful moment, this broken, wounded woman realized God was paying attention to her prayers after all and had heard her desperate cry. When this revelation sank in, a big, beautiful smile grew across her face, and she glowed with tears in her eyes. A visible peace came over her as if she had softly landed in God's arms and was finally in a safe place.

As we shared a tearful hug, I realized that God didn't just open my eyes so I would notice this woman on the side of the road. He also wanted me to see the brilliant, magnificent color when she met him face to face.

Let's pray: Lord, thank you for listening even when I feel my prayers are unheard. Forgive me when I have doubted your faithfulness. Amen

Personal challenges and reflection:

• Have you ever looked back at a situation to discover that God was working behind the scenes, although you were not aware at the time? If so, how did it impact your faith?
• Do you have the strength to continue praying even when you feel God isn’t listening? What is the value in doing so?
• Even David felt God had turned away from him and had become silent. What can we learn from his example?
• Describe the prayer life you want from this day forward.

Conclusion:

“I hope this devotional has allowed you to peel away some of the many layers of prayer and to look at this gift from new vantage points. Something that has strengthened my own prayer life recently has been to take a break from social media to focus on Jesus. Every time I am tempted to grab my phone to see what’s happening in the news or just scroll through posts by people I don’t even know, I ask Jesus what is on his heart. This has been an amazing process because it has opened new conversations with Jesus that I would have otherwise missed. And nothing gives me greater peace than when I can feel closer to him. I encourage you to try this and see for yourself! May your prayer life continue to grow deeper as you grow closer and closer to your friend and Heavenly Father.” Susan Binkley

My prayer for you comes from Psalm 20:4-5 (NLT)

May he grant your heart’s desires and make all your plans succeed. May we shout for joy when we hear of your victory and raise a victory banner in the name of our God. May the Lord answer all your prayers.

Check out https://www.bluemonarch.org to find my blog, to purchase my book, “From My Front Row Seat,” or to learn more about Blue Monarch.