Follower
Member
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2017
- Messages
- 26
I hadn't been saved that long but the Lord Jesus had baptized me in His wonderful Holy Spirit too. It was that excellent honeymoon period of my salvation when I was still getting to know the Lord better. Actually I'm still getting to know Him better after forty years so the honeymoon is yet going on.
It was a Friday night in October and I was outside walking in the moonlight and praying. I was planning on a squirrel hunt the next morning and found myself praying "Lord I'm going squirrel hunting tomorrow and I ask you to give me a limit of squirrels and I ask you to let seven of them be grey squirrels and one to be a fox squirrel and Lord can I be back home before noon? Thank you Lord, Amen.
I don't know if I'd planned to pray those things or not but that came out. So many times we're amazed at what comes out of our mouths because it's God that's giving us our prayer. Then you can be assured He's going to do something. Having a farm family heritage, fishing and hunting were second nature to me and living here in the Ouachita Mountain foothills above a fork of the Saline River was and is a gift.
It was one of those exquisite October fall mornings in the multicolored hardwoods with leaves turning and a touch of chill in the air. The translucent misty morning clouds over the stream were dissipating quickly as the sun rose. It was quiet and still except for the random Blue Jay or crow complaining about some trifle and for the clear water singing over the rocky shoals. I was easing through the woods collecting a grey now and again and then shot a fox squirrel. Well, that part of my prayer had been answered anyway. A while later I saw another fox squirrel and thought to the Lord "well I'm not going to try and answer my own prayer by not shooting this one". I tried stalking that squirrel but he dived into a hole in a hollow tree and never came back out. I finished out my limit with a couple more greys and was getting ready to wade back across the chilly Middle Fork when I heard the sound of an aluminum boat banging against some gravel as it floated downstream toward me.
Might as well save getting wet again was my thought and after hailing the float fisherman he was glad to give me a short ride. We introduced ourselves and conversed as he sculled the small flat bottom across the current. I was amazed to hear that he was a member of the very same church in Little Rock, some 50 miles away, that my mother had taken me to when I was only a small boy. That divine non-cooincidence was not lost on me. What a special morning! What are the chances of meeting someone in the woods from a church that you visited twenty five years before?
Deposited on the east bank I began to walk across the flat forested bottom toward the ridge that ended at our home. I glanced down at the clutch of squirrels hanging at my side. As I did the magnitude of what I was seeing really struck me. To think that God could tell animals to run out on a limb before my gun in specific colors was dumbfounding. Exactly as He'd done when He made the passenger list for brother Noah's ark, excepting it was by gender of course.
I dropped to my knees and right there had a small revival in that October cathedral. Crying and praying and giving thanks all at once that such a one as Jesus the Christ, the great creator really knew me. To think that He cared for me and would answer such a down to earth country boy prayer. It's in the simplest things that we commune with and meet the savior, not some complex scheme. I found it was only about ten thirty when I walked into our yard. He had answered my prayer completely. It was as if He was saying "OK, are you convinced that I'm really with you and hear your prayers", Now do you see"?
What far out prayers do you have for our Lord Jesus? Say like finding your tax money in a fishes mouth. But that's too far out and outlandish for our God right?
Jeremiah 33:3 (NKJV)
‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’
Psalm 98:8 KJVS
Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together
Ezekiel 34:25 KJVS
And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.
It was a Friday night in October and I was outside walking in the moonlight and praying. I was planning on a squirrel hunt the next morning and found myself praying "Lord I'm going squirrel hunting tomorrow and I ask you to give me a limit of squirrels and I ask you to let seven of them be grey squirrels and one to be a fox squirrel and Lord can I be back home before noon? Thank you Lord, Amen.
I don't know if I'd planned to pray those things or not but that came out. So many times we're amazed at what comes out of our mouths because it's God that's giving us our prayer. Then you can be assured He's going to do something. Having a farm family heritage, fishing and hunting were second nature to me and living here in the Ouachita Mountain foothills above a fork of the Saline River was and is a gift.
It was one of those exquisite October fall mornings in the multicolored hardwoods with leaves turning and a touch of chill in the air. The translucent misty morning clouds over the stream were dissipating quickly as the sun rose. It was quiet and still except for the random Blue Jay or crow complaining about some trifle and for the clear water singing over the rocky shoals. I was easing through the woods collecting a grey now and again and then shot a fox squirrel. Well, that part of my prayer had been answered anyway. A while later I saw another fox squirrel and thought to the Lord "well I'm not going to try and answer my own prayer by not shooting this one". I tried stalking that squirrel but he dived into a hole in a hollow tree and never came back out. I finished out my limit with a couple more greys and was getting ready to wade back across the chilly Middle Fork when I heard the sound of an aluminum boat banging against some gravel as it floated downstream toward me.
Might as well save getting wet again was my thought and after hailing the float fisherman he was glad to give me a short ride. We introduced ourselves and conversed as he sculled the small flat bottom across the current. I was amazed to hear that he was a member of the very same church in Little Rock, some 50 miles away, that my mother had taken me to when I was only a small boy. That divine non-cooincidence was not lost on me. What a special morning! What are the chances of meeting someone in the woods from a church that you visited twenty five years before?
Deposited on the east bank I began to walk across the flat forested bottom toward the ridge that ended at our home. I glanced down at the clutch of squirrels hanging at my side. As I did the magnitude of what I was seeing really struck me. To think that God could tell animals to run out on a limb before my gun in specific colors was dumbfounding. Exactly as He'd done when He made the passenger list for brother Noah's ark, excepting it was by gender of course.
I dropped to my knees and right there had a small revival in that October cathedral. Crying and praying and giving thanks all at once that such a one as Jesus the Christ, the great creator really knew me. To think that He cared for me and would answer such a down to earth country boy prayer. It's in the simplest things that we commune with and meet the savior, not some complex scheme. I found it was only about ten thirty when I walked into our yard. He had answered my prayer completely. It was as if He was saying "OK, are you convinced that I'm really with you and hear your prayers", Now do you see"?
What far out prayers do you have for our Lord Jesus? Say like finding your tax money in a fishes mouth. But that's too far out and outlandish for our God right?
Jeremiah 33:3 (NKJV)
‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’
Psalm 98:8 KJVS
Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together
Ezekiel 34:25 KJVS
And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.
