The Power of Breakthrough Prayer
I think it was around 1990 when we added the south wing of Grace Church to increase our Sunday school classrooms. A group of women felt the need for prayers for this new addition.
Those in the prayer ministry group were encouraged to each take a name of a member of the architectural firm, contractors or a lay person on the building committee and pray for them daily.
This prayer group also sent prayer cards to their chosen name, telling of their prayers and that their work would glorify God.
Later, the builders held a meeting with church members to let us know about the plans they had made for the addition. The head architect said that in all the churches he had helped to remodel, he had never received prayers from individual church members for the work to glorify God.
Then he confessed that he had been a student at North Central College when Grace Church had first wanted to move from its little church downtown to build this church way out at the end of town. He said he was a student with the group who actually picketed at the old church.
They had called us foolish. They complained about us spending so much money on a bigger church instead of using it for mission work. He also said our prayers now helped him feel forgiven for his youthful, misguided activities.
He wanted us to know that now he realized how wrong he and the other students had been. He saw that, with the new addition, we were able to do far more mission work than ever before.
This is a way that God seems to have used the power of our breakthrough prayers in an awesome way to help mature the spiritual lives of those North Central College students. We never know God’s timing in answering prayers for His kingdom here on earth.
Those in the prayer ministry group were encouraged to each take a name of a member of the architectural firm, contractors or a lay person on the building committee and pray for them daily.
This prayer group also sent prayer cards to their chosen name, telling of their prayers and that their work would glorify God.
Later, the builders held a meeting with church members to let us know about the plans they had made for the addition. The head architect said that in all the churches he had helped to remodel, he had never received prayers from individual church members for the work to glorify God.
Then he confessed that he had been a student at North Central College when Grace Church had first wanted to move from its little church downtown to build this church way out at the end of town. He said he was a student with the group who actually picketed at the old church.
They had called us foolish. They complained about us spending so much money on a bigger church instead of using it for mission work. He also said our prayers now helped him feel forgiven for his youthful, misguided activities.
He wanted us to know that now he realized how wrong he and the other students had been. He saw that, with the new addition, we were able to do far more mission work than ever before.
This is a way that God seems to have used the power of our breakthrough prayers in an awesome way to help mature the spiritual lives of those North Central College students. We never know God’s timing in answering prayers for His kingdom here on earth.