Supplication Prayers

YOUR WILL IS MY WILL

160 out of 226

I don’t like to ask God for things. I feel that God has already given me so much more than I could ever deserve, so it seems rather ungrateful for me to ask for even more. A supplication prayer suggests that I am unsatisfied and discontent with what He has already given me. But I claim that I don’t need anything except God, and I don’t want anything except to see His will be done. I have been in a relationship with God for over nineteen years now, and I have prayed 236 supplication prayers. For 10 of them I’sm still waiting to see if God will answer them. But out of the other 226, God answered 152 of them and partially answered 16 others. And some of them were so remarkable that they satisfied my definition of “miracle”!

The first time I ever asked God for anything was about four months after our relationship began. One night, I received a desparate phone call from a very good friend of mine. She was a single mother who had just discovered that she was pregnant again, and she didn’t know what to do. Then the next morning, she called again, even more distressed, because she was frightened by a number of disturbing physical problems she was experiencing. When we hung up, she went to the doctor, and I submitted my first supplication prayer to God. I asked God to do whatever He thought was best, but to please let my friend be okay. And the outcome was probably the best way to solve both of her problems: She had a miscarriage.

My second supplication prayer was for a friend who was diagnosed with brain cancer in October of 2005. I asked for God to heal her completely, with no lingering physical effects. At the time, I didn’t realize how badly the odds were against that happening. Well, my friend proved to be in the small minority. After undergoing brain surgery multiple times, she returned home in the Spring, and less than a year after that, her recovery was complete, when the doctor permitted her to drive a car again. Today she is perfectly healthy. It’s true that she believes she still has mental problems, as she gets tired during the day, and she has trouble remembering things and concentrating. But these are symptoms of anyone in their 30s, and if she thinks she has it worse than other people, I believe it’s merely psychological. In any event, she no longer complains about those things anymore.
However, she did have some very unfortunate nonphysical side effects that I hadn’t considered when I made my prayer. She lost her job, all of her friends abandoned her, and she plunged into debt. But God seems to have extended my request without me even asking. In 2007, she got a much better job than the one she had before, and later that year, she was promoted! That enabled her to pay off her debts. And, in June, 2007, this woman who was so lonely 12 months earlier got married! I would say that my prayer was completely answered and then some.

I had been in a relationship with God for two and a half years before I prayed my third supplication prayer: In my job, we charge our hours to the different projects we work on, like lawyers do. But in the middle of December, 2006, one of my projects ended, so I suddenly found myself with only one project, and it only covered 40% of my time. I immediately made sure my group lead knew I needed to find work, as it was his job to make sure everybody in his group was fully covered. I expected that this problem wouldn’t last too long. In the meantime, I “borrowed” hours from my one project, intending to pay them back when I got a new project. But weeks passed, and my group lead didn’t find any work for me. I kept meeting with him periodically, and I was doing my own project hunting too, speaking with over twenty people about my problem. And meanwhile, I was sinking deeper and deeper in debt to my one project.
After six weeks of this, I was terribly frustrated. It was clear that I was unable to solve this problem on my own. These are the times, I was told, when I’m supposed to solicit God for his help. So I finally decided to bite the bullet and pray to God to help me. I requested that I would have a project by the following Monday, which would be the beginning of week #8. Immediately I felt surprisingly confident that my prayer was going to be answered. Throughout the week, I told people about my prayer and how certain I was that I would have new work by Monday. And lo and behold, on Friday, at 4:30pm (close of business), I was hired to work on a new project that would cover the necessary 60% of my time.
If that wasn’t enough to call it a miracle, there’s more. But first, you’ll need to read this to understand why pennies and dimes are very important to me. So when I emptied my pockets that Friday evening, I found three pennies in my front left pocket. This was extremely unusual. It’s true that I often put pennies and dimes in my pocket at the beginning of the day. But three pennies and no dimes in my front left pocket was inexplicable, because:
  1. I almost always put the pennies and dimes in my back left pocket.
  2. Usually, I carried the same number of dimes and pennies. with one penny and one dime being the most common.
  3. On the rare occasions when I chose unequal numbers of dimes and pennies, it was almost always more dimes than pennies.
  4. On the very rare occasions when I carried more pennies than dimes, the difference was only 1. I couldn’t remember ever having two more pennies than dimes.
But on the evening of the day that my prayer was answered, there were three pennies and no dimes in my front-left pocket. The following day, I wore a different pair of pants. And at the end of the day, in my back-left pocket, I found four pennies and no dimes. So it is clear to me that God was telling me He had answered my prayer. It was not a coincidence. It was an act of God — a miracle.

At about this time, one of my Bible study groups looked at verses like:
“...I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it...” John 14:13z-14
NIV
“... If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you...” John 15:7
NIV
“...If two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven...” Matthew 18:19z
NIV
“... whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours...” Mark 11:24z
NIV
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. I John 5:14-15
NIV
“... I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit-fruit that will last-and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you...” John 15:16z
NIV
Naturally, I was highly skeptical about such incredible guarantees. Then, later, I learned that God actually wants us to ask Him for things, because our prayers give Him opportunities to demonstrate His power and receive glory. (See this parable.) So, I decided to give it a try. In 2007, when God still had a perfect record in answering my prayers, I made nine supplication prayers, eight of which were answered. But four of them were relatively small, and can be explained psychologically, because they depended only on me. For example: I had had an appointment with my dentist, in which she repeatedly asked me not to swallow while she was working on me. But try as I might, I was unable to comply. I couldn’t help it. So, a couple of weeks later, as I was driving to the dentist again, I asked God to keep me from swallowing. Well, as it turned out, this appointment was much shorter than I expected, and I didn’t swallow at all. However, I don’t see the need to invoke God in order to explain this, because it was enough for me to truly believe that my prayer would be answered. After all, this one was completely under my control.

One day, I drove to a meeting that started at 3:00. But I left my home late — very late. I gave myself only 30 minutes to make a 45-minute drive. So, it was unlikely that I would make it to the meeting by 3:00, but not inconceivable. If the traffic was good, so I could maintain a 69 mph speed on the highway, I could make up the time.
The traffic on Route 495 wasn’t too bad, although I couldn’t get up to 69 mph. Fortunately, I only had to stay on 495 for a couple of exits. The highway that would take me most of the way was Route 66. That was where it was important to go fast.
When I first got on Route 66, the traffic was about the same as on Route 495. I was thinking that it needed to get better soon if I was going to meet my goal. But it didn’t get better. It got worse. The cars slowed down. And then they slowed down some more. And then everyone stopped. We weren’t moving at all. We weren’t crawling. It wasn’t stop and go traffic. It was a parking lot. As far ahead as I could see, all of the brake lights were on. And the digital clock in my car said 2:45. It was at this point that I resigned. Clearly, I wasn’t going to make it to my meeting on time.
While I sat there, I started think about the Bible verses that claimed that God would answer every prayer. I still couldn’t believe that the Lord would really answer each and every prayer of supplication. But while I was sitting there in a parking lot, I thought, “What harm could it do to ask?” After all, the worst that could happen was that I would get to my meeting late, and that was surely going to happen anyway. So I said, “Dear Lord, how would you like to put on a show and impress me yet again. Of course, it’s not really a big deal. It wouldn’t be devastating if you didn’t do it. But just for fun, I’ll ask anyway: Please make me arrive at the meeting by the time that the clock in my car says 3:00, if you will. It would certainly be unbelievable if you did it. But if you did, I would tell people about it, bringing you as much glory as I can. And, I claim that it is in your holy name I pray, whatever that means. Amen.”
Now I want to take a moment here to say something to you, the reader. You probably think that I wouldn’t be telling this story if God didn’t answer my prayer. Well, don’t be so sure. I think you’ll find the ending of this little story to be quite surprising...
So, when I completed my prayer, immediately, the traffic began moving... NOT! No, we all remained completely stopped. And as the minutes passed, I found myself feeling a little disappointed that God wasn’t going to answer my prayer.
When we finally started moving, the clock read 2:49. Soon we were moving at a good speed, though I never did get up to 69mph. As I was exiting the highway, I glanced at the clock: 2:53. That surprised me, as it had felt like significantly more than four minutes. But it wasn’t good enough. I still had to get through a few stop lights, and then there were the little streets with the slow speed limits. And by the way, I had never before gone to this destination without making at least one wrong turn.
The first couple of lights were green, but then I reached the light where I needed to make a left turn, and it was red. As I waited for the light to change, I noticed that the clock said 2:58. I smiled, thinking, “Well, technically, it’s not over yet...”
Then I got on the 25 mph roads. And, although I could have gone faster, I didn’t go over 34 mph. I really didn’t think it was worth it to risk getting a ticket. Then I reached an intersection where I wasn’t sure which way to turn. So I made my best guess and crossed my fingers. And all the while, I kept glancing at the clock. Every time I looked, it still said 2:58. I didn’t know what to make of that. Was the clock broken?
When I made the last turn to enter the home stretch, the clock said 2:59. For the first time since I prayed, I started to think that I might actually get there on time after all. But it was still unlikely. I had a good distance to go on this road, and I refused to drive too fast. Finally, I reached my destination and turned to the right to enter the parking lot. I looped around, stopped in a parking space, turned off the car, and looked at the clock.
I was stunned!
I was amazed!!!
It was absolutely unbelievable!!!
3:00.
It was one of the most incredible things I have ever witnessed. It certainly qualified as a miracle. Now, I view those Bible verses with an entirely different perspective.
So after parking the car, I entered the building. However, everybody else was late, so the meeting didn’t actually begin until 3:45. (By the way, that’s the surprise ending that I was referring to earlier.)
Oh, and as a side note, the next time I went to that destination, it took me an hour and fifteen minutes.

On Christmas Eve, 2007, I lost my cell phone — not an uncommon occurrence. The next morning, I began looking for it. There really weren’t that many places it could be. After all, I had made a phone call at 4:30pm the previous day, and then I couldn’t find it when I went to bed at 11:00pm that night, and I hadn’t gone anywhere between those two times. But I looked everywhere I could think of and I couldn’t find it. I even looked in my car, which was ridiculous, since I hadn’t gone anywhere near the car the previous night. But while I was in the car, I thought of one more place the phone might be. Sometimes when I sit in my La-Z-Boy chair, things slip out of my pockets and fall down into the sides of the seat cushion. I was sure it had to be there, because I had already checked everyplace else. But before I went back indoors, I asked God to let the phone be in the chair. I figured this would be a pretty easy prayer to answer.
First I checked under the chair to see if the phone had slipped all the way through to the floor. It wasn’t there. Next I checked the right side of the cushion, and as I was doing that, I realized how silly this was, because I always keep the phone in my left pocket. So I checked the left side. Nothing. Before I had a chance to feel disappointed, out of a desire to to see God succeed, I checked the back of the cushion. Afterwards I realized how silly it was to look there. I had never checked the back of the cushion before. I can’t even imagine how anything could fall in there, because when I’m sitting in the chair, I’m blocking that area. And yet, near the middle of the back of the cushion, there was my phone!
It seems to me that God often does this sort of thing. After all, if the phone had been on the left side of the cushion, it would be hard to claim that God did it, because my phone had fallen there several times before. But for it to be in the back of the cushion forces me to think that something unusual was going on.

One day I lost my wallet. Yes, I do lose things a lot. But they usually turn up again eventually. However, “eventually” sometimes means more than a month. I certainly couldn’t get by for a month without my credit cards and driver’s license. I was okay with driving without a license, being very careful not to get a police officer’s attention. But in three days, I was planning to go to a car dealer and possibly buy a car. I expected I would need my wallet to do that.
So I looked in the places where I usually keep my wallet: the top section in my backpack, my nightstand, the pockets of the pants I had worn the day before, etc. But I didn’t find it in any of the usual places.
Next I began looking in unusual places. Despite the fact that I thought it was too large to fall out of my pocket while I was sitting down, I looked around the cushion of my La-Z-Boy chair and the other places I had sat down in the last 24 hours.
When I didn’t find it, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to look, I realized that my only option was to wait for it to turn up. But I would need to start replacing my credit cards and driver’s license before long.
The following morning I still couldn’t think of any other places it might be. So when I was praying, I decided to ask God to show me where my wallet was before I went to the car dealer in two days.
Six hours later I found it in the front section of my backpack.

A couple of weeks later, I lost my cell phone again. (Okay, okay. Leave me alone!) As I was retracing my steps and searching for it, I was thinking, “Why don’t I just go ahead and ask God to help me? That would save me some time and effort.” But it seems to me that it’s important to search for it until I give up, because if I asked God to lead me to my cell phone, and then I found it in an obvious place, it wouldn’t seem all that amazing. It would be difficult to conclude that God was even involved at all. So I searched and searched and searched. And when I couldn’t think of any place else, I sat down and submitted my request to God. I asked Him to lead me to it by Friday night. (When I prayed, it was Thursday morning, and I had lost the phone on Wednesday.)
Less than an hour later, I found out where my cell phone was, and I went to get it back later that day.
Then, about a week later, on Tuesday, I lost my cell phone and my car keys. (Perhaps God was hiding my things to convince me that He wanted me to pray for things more often.) Again, I insisted on searching everywhere I could think of. Eventually I found the car keys under my La-Z-Boy chair. And just in case I might try to take credit for finding them myself, God left evidence that He was responsible: Next to the cell phone were two pennies. (I explain the significance of pennies here.)
However, my cell phone was still missing, and I couldn’t think of anyplace else to look for it. After more than a full day passed, I finally decided to ask God for my phone. But this time I thought I would try to bring more glory to God when He answered my prayer. I asked God to lead me to my cell phone, but not to do it today (Thursday) or tomorrow (Friday). Instead, I requested that He lead me to my phone on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. My thought was that, after the phone hadn’t turned up for three or four days, it was rather unlikely that I would find it any time soon. (For example, three years after Jesus ascended, people probably thought that he was likely to return within a year. But now that he has been gone for nearly two thousand years, we aren’t really expecting him to return this year.)
Well anyway, less than an hour later, I learned where it was, and I got it back on Friday morning. So although I got what I wanted (the phone), I guess technically this has to count as an unanswered prayer. I have decided to count it as a half-answered prayer.

I was planning to attend a wedding, so I bought a greeting card. But on the morning of the wedding, I couldn’t find it. The last time I had seen it, I was dropping it into my backpack, but I checked all of the pockets and couldn’t find it. After searching throughout my hotel room, I decided I must have taken the card out when I was hanging out in my cousin’s hotel room the night before. Unfortunately, she was out. So I left her a voice mail message asking her to let me into her room. Then I prayed for God to give me the card before 3:00pm, the time when I had to leave for the wedding. After that, I sat down and started working on my laptop computer.
Well, as the clock approached 3:00, I still hadn’t heard from my cousin. So I went to my aunt and uncle’s hotel room, because they had adjoining rooms with my cousin. But unfortunately, the door connecting the two rooms was locked. So there was nothing more I could do. Oh well. Chalk it up as an unanswered prayer.
So I told my aunt and uncle that I was heading off to the wedding and I’d see them there. But my aunt said, “Why are you going so early?” “Early? It’s 3:00.” “No it isn’t.” Soon I figured out that the clock in my hotel room was fast. It was actually 2:15pm. The story wasn’t over yet.
I returned to my hotel room and pulled a book out of my backpack. I note that, if my clock had been correct, I would have continued working on the computer until 3:00pm. There is practically no chance that I would have opened that book. So I wouldn’t have found the card hiding inside that book. God had answered a prayer for me after I had decided the prayer was unanswered.

The next time I lost something, it was at a huge amusement park. And thing I lost was... everything! Earlier, before playing a game of physical skill, I had emptied my pockets into a bag. That bag had both of my wallets, all of my keys, my cell phone, and some other things. And I only had about five minutes to find it before I needed to return to meet with my friends, who would be ready to go home.
Well this time, I didn’t deliberate about whether or not I should make a supplication prayer. I quickly asked God to lead me to the bag in the next five minutes and then began retracing my steps. I did find the bag, but it wasn’t actually on my path. Somebody must have moved it. Thank goodness they didn’t steal it.

When I was on vacation at the World Boardgaming Championships, a gaming extravaganza, my car key disappeared. It is not a good thing to lose your car key when you are 300 miles away from home, particularly if your spare key is at said home. Quite inconvenient.
I realized that my key was lost on Wednesday night, and by Thursday morning, I decided that I needed to pray for this one. If I couldn’t find my key, I was going to have serious problems, particularly since it was an electronic key. So I asked for God to give me my car key back by noon on Sunday, which was when I was planning to head home.
Then I tore my hotel room apart, scouring every inch of the floor. I found a couple of interesting things and a couple of not-so-interesting things, but no keys. Next, I went to the hotel registration desk to ask if anybody had turned in my key. I thought this was reasonably likely, because I had spent the previous day gaming in various hotel conference rooms. But, no. No car key.
Much as I trusted that God would return my key to me, I needed to cover my bases. The process of getting a replacement electronic key was bound to be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. So if I was going to go home in just three days, I needed to get the process started. So I called a couple of roadside assistance numbers and got a bit of a runaround. But I didn’t find this to be stressful and frustrating as I usually would. I suppose that the confidence I had in God answering my prayer made these problems much less important. I mean, it would be irresponsible for me to do nothing, but at the same time, it didn’t feel like it was really necessary for me to succeed. I kind of thought that God was impeding my progress so that I wouldn’t start spending money on a new key before he gave me my keys back.
But the next morning, Friday morning, I checked for the keys at the hotel registration desk, to no avail. At this point, I realized that I should have given God an earlier deadline, since I was going to need to begin committing my money for a new key pretty soon. After another slew of phone calls, I determined that I needed to get my car towed to the local Toyota dealer (which was sure to be expensive), find out what my key code was from the Toyota dealer at home, get the local dealer to make me a new key with that code (which would undoubtably be very expensive), and then somehow get my car back into my possession (which would cost even more money). I called the Toyota dealer at home, got passed around from one person to another for a little while, and eventually got the key code. Then I called the local dealer, but... their parts department had just closed! I was less than five minutes late. If I had called five minutess earlier, I would surely have given them a credit card number. But as it was, I had to wait until Saturday morning to start spending.
And Saturday morning, naturally, my key was at the hotel registration desk! I love You, God!!!

I took my dogs to the leashless dog park where we stayed for about an hour. Then when we got home, I reached into my pocket to find my house keys... and they weren’t there. What else is new, huh? There was a hole in the bottom of that pocket, but it was too small for the keys to fit through. The obvious culprit was the plastic bags (for picking up after my dog) in that pocket. I figured that the keys flew out when I pulled one of those bags out. That meant my keys must have been on the ground of the dog park somewhere.
I didn’t want to go back to the dog park, because it was a fifteen-minute drive each way. And I wouldn’t have worried about my house keys, because I have copies of them. But on that keychain, there were also keys to a secure government site where I work, and those keys would not be easy to replace. In addition, I had been planning to go to that site later in the day. So I really needed those keys.
So I put the dogs back in the car and drove out to the dog park. On the way there, I thought about asking God to give me my keys. It was really a pointless prayer. I mean where else could they be? I had them when I locked the door of my home. Then I drove to the park. Then I drove back. And that’s when I discovered the keys were missing. So they must be somewhere on the ground of that park. The ground of the dog park is nice and flat, and my keychain had a bright blue rectangle attached to it. I really didn’t need God’s help this time, did I? Well, I finally decided that, since finding the keys was so very important, I should play it safe. So I asked God to lead me to my keys before I gave up and left the dog park.
When we arrived, I started walking inside the park next to the fence, because, when we were there before, I had walked round and round the edge of the park. I hadn’t gone in the middle of the park at all, so my keys had to be somewhere near the fence. Based on this logic, I started getting concerned when I completed the loop without finding my keys. But I moved inward a few feet and started walking around the park again. And while I was walking, I was talking to God. “You never seem to want to make it easy, do you? I mean, would it be so bad if I just found the keys where I expected to find them?”
After the second walk around the park, things were looking dim. But based on past experience, God seems to like making me think He is going to fail me so that He can surprise me when He does answer my prayer. So, not knowing what else to do, I moved in another few feet and started walking around the park a third time.
About halfway around the third loop, I was struggling to figure out where else the keys might be. I thought about that hole in my pocket. I supposed that, if the keys oriented themselves just right, they might be able to slip through that hole. But then they would just fall on the ground, so I should still have found them. And as I was thinking about the keys falling through the pocket, down my leg, and onto the ground, I was looking at my leg. When my eyes reached the bottom of my pants, I stopped. I was wearing sweatpants, and the bottom of the leg was elastic, so it was hugging my leg. “No way!” I thought as I reached down and pulled my keys out of the leg of my pants.
The thing is, I would have found my keys anyway when I took off my pants to go to bed. It really didn’t matter if I couldn’t find them while I was at still the dog park, and God knew it. But I had prayed to find them before leaving the park, so God made it happen. But if I had chosen a deadline two days away (which I had considered doing), would I have left the park before finding my keys?

It had been quite a while since I had made a supplication prayer when I lost my work badge. I’m usually so careful with my badge, so I rarely lose it. I always put it in the same pocket in my backpack, a pocket within a pocket, and I clip it to the side of pocket. But on this particular morning, in my car on the way to work, there was nothing clipped to the side of the pocket. I checked every pocket in the backpack and came up with nothing. I would have to get a temporary badge, so I wouldn’t be able to get into the secure lab unless somebody opened the door for me. About a week before this, I worked for a few hours at the lab in the middle of the night. Without my badge, I couldn’t do that. Fortunately, I wasn’t planning to work late on this particular day.
Losing my badge reminded me of my supplication prayers, since I had prayed to find lost things so many times. So, there in the parking lot of my office, I prayed for God to return my badge to me before I needed it to enter the building on the following day. That was a rather tight deadline, but I felt my need for the badge was that great. And, I reasoned, it certainly wasn’t too hard for the Lord to grant my request in just one day.
Well, the next morning arrived right on schedule, and I found myself in my office parking lot again, ready to go in to work. But where was my badge? I checked in the car around the from passenger seat, because sometimes, in haste, I leave my badge on that seat with the intention of putting it away at the next red light. I looked in the sides of the seat, the door pocket, on the floor, behind the seat, under the seat, ... no luck. So I checked the areas around the driver’s seat. I kept searching, refusing to give up, not so much because I wanted my badge so badly, but because I wanted God to fulfill my request. But eventually, I had covered every place that the badge might be as well as some places that it couldn’t be. (I even thought about looking under the hood, but I decided that would be too ridiculous.)
Dejected, I walked into the building and went to the security desk to request a temporary badge to use for the day. But when I reached the desk, I decided to check my backpack again. This was clearly hopeless, but I just couldn’t give up. So there, with my backpack on the security desk, I emptied each pocket and ran my hand along the bottom. And when I pulled my jacket out of the second-to-last pocket, my badge fell out on to the counter. I was so thrilled, and I was praising God with thanksgiving. Lord you are so faithful.
Later that same day, I lost my wallet. This was much more serious. And I was going to need the ID card in my wallet in just a couple of hours when I went out to the church. So I prayed for God to give me back my wallet before I left for church. And He did. Two for two in a single day. Isn’t the Lord great?

One day, as I was driving to a friend’s house for our 2009 Fantasy Football draft, I thought about asking God to help me in the draft. “Does God care about competitive games?” I wondered. Somehow, it didn’t seem right for God to help one player win. It isn’t fair, is it? And what about when thousands of people pray for each team in an NFL game to win? God can’t answer all of their prayers, unless they might all be satisfied with a tie. On the other hand, some of the people praying for their team to win might have bet a lot of money on the game. The outcome of the game might change their lives. In that case, I can see God intervening.
But, returning to the Fantasy Football draft, although there is money involved, it’s just a few hundred dollars. That’s not likely to be a significant factor in God’s decision whether or not to intervene. So if I were to ask God for help and he answered my prayer, wouldn’t that be cheating? If one of the players was being helped by somebody with insider information, that would certainly cause an uproar. So how is this different? We should each be competing without any outside help. It should be one brain against another. It should be a match between our strategic abilities.
But then I realized, if our strategic abilities are a factor, and they surely are, then it’s not a fair game at all, because some of us have been gifted with better strategic abilities than others. And if those abilities came from God, as Christian church doctrine claims, then God has already interfered in our game. So, if that’s okay, then it’s probably okay for Him to interfere a little more.
So, I ended up deciding to pray for God’s help in the draft, even though the competition wasn’t really important enough to warrant a prayer. But I wanted to learn whether God interferes in competitive games, because learning about God is very important to me. So I prayed that I would draft: 1) the Pittsburgh defense, 2) one of the two kickers that I wanted, 3) one of the four quarterbacks that I wanted, and 4) one of the six running backs that I wanted. I can’t explain why I forgot to ask for one of the eight wide receivers that I wanted.
Well, if you’re familiar with the game and want to estimate the odds, you’ll need to know that there are twelve players in my league and I had three keepers. True, what I was asking for wasn’t ridiculously unlikely. Perhaps it wasn’t even all that unlikely, but it wasn’t a sure thing either. Anyway, I got everything I asked for: 1) the Pittsburgh defense, 2) the top kicker, 3) the fourth-best quarterback, and 4) the fifth-best running back. But I didn’t get any of the wide receivers I wanted.
So, does God interfere in competitive games? Well, I have some positive evidence, but it’s far from conclusive.
Oh, and I also asked God for the Jacksonville Jaguars to go to the Super Bowl. Alas, as predicted, the Jaguars didn’t even make it into the playoffs.

One night, I took my dogs outside to go to the bathroom for the last time that night. When I returned, I discovered that my door was locked. I had my key, so if it had been the key lock, there would have been no problem. But it was the brass swing bar lock. (See the first picture.) How is it possible to lock a brass swing bar lock from the outside? Well, since I keep the leashes hanging on the coat rack by the door, as I leave, sometimes one of the leashes catches the bar and swings it around while the door is closing. The leash slides off the bar and goes out the door with me, but then the door bangs into the bar and can’t close all the way because the bar is blocking it. So I imagined that this is what might have happened: As I left, a leash had pulled the bar, slid off of it and gone out the door with me, just as it had done before. But this time the door closed before the bar swung all the way. Then the bar hit the door, and the door was locked.
So there I was, locked out of my home. I could open the door wide enough to stick my hand inside up to my wrist, so I tried to manipulate the lock with my hands, but that was useless. I thought about attaching a string to it to somehow cause the bar to swing out while the door was closed. I went through my pockets and couldn’t find anything that might be useful. Then I noticed the dog leashes. I have retractable leashes that look something like the second picture. I took the leash off of one of my dogs and then tried to attach the end of it to the bar. It fit! I pushed the leash’s heavy handle through the door, started it swinging, and closed the door. I was hoping that when it swung back the other way, it would pull the lock bar around. Well, it didn’t work. And I realized that it wasn’t going to work, because I had hooked the leash onto the right end of the bar — the only end with a wide enough opening for the ball on the other side of the lock to fit through it. The leash’s hook was preventing the ball of the lock from sliding all the way to that end of the bar, so there was no way that it could separate from the bar. I needed to connect the leash’s hook to the other end of the bar.
At this point, I thought to myself, “Who do I think I am? Why should I even imagine that I can unlock this door? A brass swing bar lock is designed to be impossible to open from the outside. And it’s a standard type of lock. If there was some way to break through it, wouldn’t somebody have figured it out by now? The reason that so many people use it is because it keeps people out.” My efforts to open the door were futile... unless... unless I had God’s help. Clearly, God must have locked the door. I mean, the timing would have to be perfect for a leash to pull the bar, then slip off and get through the door before the door closed, and then the bar would need to swing all the way around after the door closed. And if the bar was pulled too hard, wouldn’t it bounce off the door and swing back open again?
I did consider the possibility that there might be an intruder in my home who had locked the door. But by the time I thought of that, I had already been playing with the lock for several minutes, and I hadn’t noticed any evidence that there was somebody inside. Besides, why would an intruder lock the bar lock and not lock the key lock too? Maybe if I had ever been robbed before, I might have considered the intruder theory to be more plausible. But I decided to dismiss it pretty quickly. For some reason, I thought it was less believable than my other theory.
I also thought about calling somebody on my cell phone. But who could I call? The police? They would probably just make me wait for an hour or two for them to arrive and then tell me that there was nothing they could do. What if I called a locksmith? Would he have any idea how to “pick” a brass swing bar lock? Is it even possible? Another option I considered was to drive somewhere. But where? It was late at night... and the next day was a holiday. I couldn’t imagine being locked out of my home for two days..
So I decided to do the thing that had the best chance of working: I prayed to God. I asked God to get me in my home by 11:00pm. (It was about 10:00pm at the time.) And then I started working on the lock again, with renewed hope of success.
So I tried to hook the leash onto the bar of the lock at some point beyond where the lock’s ball was connected to it. I was able to extend my hand through the door enough to reach the end of the bar... barely. But when the door was open as far as it would go, the ball was at the end of the bar, so there was no room for the leash’s hook. I could close the door a little bit, squeezing my wrist, but I was still unable to attach the hook to the bar. I started to wonder if the hook was even large enough to fit around the bar, so I tried attaching it at the end close to me, at a point on the bar where it didn’t have the wide opening. And indeed, the hook couldn’t open wide enough to fit around the bar.
So I switched to the other dog’s leash, because it had a larger hook. Testing it on the close end of the bar, I found out that the hook could open wide enough, but now there was another problem. In order for the hook to fit through the opening in the bar (between the top and bottom parts), it had to come in at an angle that required me to stretch my hand further through the door. I could do that at the close end of the bar, but I couldn’t stretch my hand far enough to connect the hook to the other end of the bar.
At this point, I decided to see if I had accidentally left my sliding glass door unlocked. It happens sometimes, but it’s pretty rare. So I took the dogs back outside to my porch and... no luck. The door was locked. But while I was on the porch, I noticed the bungee cord that I used to hang up my thermometer. It had a hook on each end, and those hooks were thinner than the hooks on the dog leashes. Before I walked back around to the front door, I tried opening one of the windows to my bedroom. It wouldn’t open. To try the other window, I had to take the screen off. That wasn’t too difficult. But the window didn’t open. (I later found out that one of that window’s two locks was open. But the other one was closed, so the window couldn’t be opened.)
I returned to the front door and tried attaching one of the hooks on the bungee cord to the lock’s bar beyond the ball. To my surprise, it connected on the first try! Then I needed something heavy so that when I swung the cord, it might pull the lock open. The handle on a dog leash was heavy. I had to lock the leash’s cord so that it wouldn’t come out so far that it would drag on the floor, and then I attached its hook to the bungee cord’s hook. “Okay,” I thought to myself. “Here we go.” I swung the leash slowly (so that it wouldn’t come off of the bungee cord) and closed the door. Then, after a short pause for suspense, I opened the door. I opened the door all the way! It had worked! It had worked on the first try! I looked at the clock. It was 10:18pm.
I praised the Lord profusely. I was truly thrilled that He had done such an amazing thing. Actually, He showed me a double miracle that night. First He locked the door, and then He opened it.

One day, when it was time for me to take my dogs for a walk, I couldn’t find my door card. I quickly searched throughout my home, but I couldn’t find it. This was bad news. Without that card, I can’t get back into my building. I don’t have a backup copy. I would have to wait for somebody to come and open the door for me, and that could mean waiting for quite a while. But I had work to do with an impending deadline. I needed that card.
So, as I’m supposed to do whenever God hides something, like my house keys, my car key, my wallet, my cell phone, etc., I began a supplication prayer, but then I wondered how to set a deadline. (In my supplication prayers, I almost always set a deadline for God to answer my prayer. Otherwise, I would have no way of knowing whether or not he wanted to do what I asked for. Once I prayed for Him to bring my weight below 140lbs, but I didn’t set a deadline, so really, there’s no way He can fail to answer it until I die. My weight has gone up above 170lbs now, so should I count this as an unanswered prayer? Would that show a lack of faith? So far, I continue to list it as an open prayer.)
My dogs had just finished eating dinner, and they were waiting for their walk. So I said, “Lord, please show me where my door card is now.” But then, I thought, if that “now” is taken literally, then there’s no way for Him to answer the prayer. I’ve set Him up to fail. However, we don’t generally take “now” literally in a sentence like that. When a mother tells her child to go to school “now,” she doesn’t immediately think that the child has already disobeyed. There’s an implied window of time in which the child can go to school in obedience to his mother. But how long is that window? I had to take the dogs out. I really couldn’t wait much longer. How long should I search before I could give up without showing a lack of faith? I had put myself in a difficult position.
While I was thinking all this, I turned around and saw my foot rest (a piece of furniture) beside my bed. I thought, “Maybe my door card is underneath it.” So I grabbed the foot rest and flipped it over. <Dramatic pause... No! Pause longer!> And there it was. There was no way I could have seen it without looking under that foot rest. I was absolutely amazed. And I praised God profusely.

Here’s another story in which I lost my wallet, I couldn’t find it, I prayed to God, and then I found it. But I’m including it here, because it has a surprise ending.
So, one day, I decided to take a nap. It was about 3:30pm. I set my cell phone alarm for 4:30, because that’s dinner time for my dogs. Then I set the cell phone down on the nightstand on the left side of my bed. I took off my shoes and tossed them over the bed; they landed on the floor near the right side of my bed. Then, as I was lying down, I felt my wallet in my left pocket. Take note. My wallet was in my left pocket. Keep your eye on the wallet and see if you can figure out where it ended up.
So I have a basket where I leave my wallet, keys, etc. when I’m sleeping, but the basket is next to the wall, beyond the foot of the bed, and I didn’t feel like walking the 15 feet to get there. So I left my wallet in my left pocket.
My cat was sleeping where I would normally put my legs, and he seemed so comfortable that I decided not to make him move. Instead, I lay down across my pillows. So my entire body was at the head of the bed. I didn’t bother pulling my blanket over me, and I never sleep under the sheet. Maybe I should draw you a diagram. (See the picture.)
I don’t know if I fell asleep. I might have. I’m not sure. I do remember rolling over at least twice.
When my cell phone alarm rang, I got up on the left side of the bed, picked up the cell phone, and turned off the alarm. Then I walked beside the left side of my bed and dropped the cell phone in the basket. Next, I left the room to go feed the dogs. I came back to my bedroom to put on my shoes, because I walk the dogs when they finish eating their dinner. I sat on the right side of my bed to put on my shoes.
It was when I stood up that I realized I didn’t feel my wallet in my left pocket. I checked, but it wasn’t there. Of course, I figured that it fell out of my pocket while I was sleeping. So I walked along the left side of my bed to look at the head of the bed. Next, I looked under my blanket, and then I lifted my pillows. I took my pillows off the bed, checking to see if it had somehow gotten inside one of them. Then I checked the floor. I looked under the left side of my bed. There isn’t much space there, because I have boxes covering nearly all of the floor under my bed, but there was enough space for a wallet to hide there. I also looked behind the head of the bed. There wasn’t enough space for my wallet to fall through there, but I looked through the space to check the floor anyway.
Then I walked back to the foot of the bed and lifted my blanket above the bed (which caused the cat to leave). I shook my blanket over the bed, making sure it stayed over the bed so that if my wallet fell out, it would land on the bed instead of the floor. So then the only thing left on my bed was my sheet, and there were no wallet-sized bumps in it. Next I checked the floor on the right side of my bed. I got down to look under the right side of the bed. Finally, I walked back to the foot of my bed and checked under the blanket again.
At that point I was completely out of ideas. I had checked everywhere that I could think of. So I prayed for God to show me where my wallet was. I asked Him to give it back to me within the next two days, because otherwise I would have to buy a new key card to get into my building.
After praying, I stood there at the foot of the bed wondering what I should do. Should I check under the blanket again? My foot hit something, and I looked down. It was one of my dogs’ bones. They were no longer interested in it, so I decided to throw it away. When I got down on my knees to pick it up, I saw my wallet. It was hiding under the foot of the bed. How did it get there? You tell me. I have absolutely no idea. I’ll call it a miracle.

Yesterday, as I was driving to work, I propped up my cell phone beside the handle of a compartment between the two front seats of the car. (See the first picture.) At work, I parked my car, climbed the stairs, and entered my office, at which point I noticed that my cell phone was missing. Of course, I assumed that it was where I left it in the car. But as I was driving home from work, I noticed that my phone wasn't there. I figured it had fallen on the floor, so at the first stop light, I turned on the lights inside the car and examined the floor of the front passenger seat. No phone. I felt around the floor of my own seat with my foot, but I still couldn't find the phone. I checked the gap between my seat and the compartment without success. There was really no other place I could reach without taking off my seatbelt. I did consider checking inside the compartment, but that was ridiculous. The compartment was closed, so the phone couldn't have fallen in there. My best guess at this point was that the phone was underneath one of the seats, but I'd have to wait until I stopped the car to verify that.
When the light changed to green, I turned off the inside car lights and proceeded to drive. I was very confident that my phone was somewhere in my car. But even still, based on the past experience reported on this web page, I decided to submit a supplication prayer to God. I asked Him to show me where my phone was within the next two hours. I figured that was plenty of time to thoroughly search my car. This was an easy prayer for God to answer, and if He did, I would certainly not count that as a miracle. Actually, if I didn't find my phone in the car, I would consider that to be extremely remarkable indeed.
I had set an alarm on my phone for 10:00pm, and at 10:00pm, it began to ring. I smiled and thanked God. Now I was absolutely certain that the phone was in the car, and the ringing alarm would make it easier to find. At the next red light, I turned on the inside car lights and began searching for the sound, but the traffic light turned green before I could find it.
Then I reached the stop light near a gas station that sells my favorite candy bar. In the past, I often stopped there on my way home from work, but for my health's sake, I decided that I wouldn't do that anymore unless the light was red and I was first in line. In that case, I would suppose that maybe God was permitting me to eat the candy bar, so I would turn right on red and go into the gas station. Well, on this particular day, I was first in line at the red light, so I went to the gas station.
My gas tank was down to two bars, so I decided that, as long as I was there, I would go ahead and fill the tank. While the gas was pumping, I started looking through the car for the cell phone. The alarm seemed to be close to that central compartment, so I checked the gap between that compartment and the front passenger seat, but it wasn't there. I again had the thought of looking inside the compartment, and it seemed the sound was coming from there, so, even though it was impossible for the phone to be in there, I went ahead and opened it. And there was my phone, lying innocently in the compartment!
It seems to me that that was not a miracle; it was absolutely impossible! I took out my phone and closed the compartment, and then I propped the phone up where it had been before and tried to push it in the compartment. Of course, it didn't budge. The compartment doesn't have a hole there. There was absolutely no way that my phone could have fallen into the compartment, unless the compartment had somehow popped open by itself and then, after the phone slipped in, the lid came all the way back down and clicked shut. Is that even the slightest bit conceivable? The compartment had never opened by itself before, and it didn't appear to be broken. And even if the lid did go up, it has a spring that holds the lid open, so it would require a very strong wind to permeate the rear windshield in order to push it back down and click it shut. The second picture shows how high the spring holds the lid up.
I strained my imagination to come up with any kind of explanation, and the best idea I had was that somebody broke into the car, opened the compartment, slipped my phone in, closed the compartment, repaired any damage he had done to get in the car, and left without taking anything. What is the probability of that?
Also, if the alarm wasn't ringing, I probably wouldn't have looked inside the compartment. Indeed, it is very surprising that I should even consider looking in there at all, as it was such an unimaginable idea. So I suspect that it might not have been my idea. When I have a thought that surprises me, I consider the possibility that The Holy Spirit planted it in my mind.

I took my dog to a leashless dog park that we had visited many times before. I removed her leash and opened the gate. She proceeded to run to the far end of the dog park, and then she started looking for a place to poop. She usually did that. I had to pick up after her, so I followed her. Now, I've never been able to run as fast as her, and at this time, I was old and fat, so I didn't even try to run.
As I had expected, I saw her squat. She was more than 150 feet away from me. So, I lined up my feet and carefully walked directly toward the target.
Then a Golden Retriever came up to me. My dog is also a Golden Retreiver, and it's my favorite breed, so I couldn't resist; I stopped to pet the dog. As I was looking down, I saw a tennis ball on the ground. Since I know that Golden Retrievers love to chase tennis balls, I picked it up. But while I was doing that, the dog turned around and walked away. So, I decided I would throw the ball for my own dog.
Then I realized that I had inadvertently turned my feet, so I no longer knew the exact direction to go. I walked in the general direction all the way to the fence without finding my dog's gift. Then I started walking around, looking at the ground in all directions, to no avail. I knew my task was particularly hard, because the autumn leaves were the same color as the pile, so they camaflauged it.
I asked my dog to show me where it was, but I hadn't trained her to do that, so she just looked at me. After searching for about five minutes, I was about ready to give up. I asked God to show me where it was. Then I decided to make this an official supplication prayer that I would count for the statistics on this web page. I praised God before stating my request, which was for Him to show me where my dog had relieved herself before I counted to 100. Then, remembering Mark 11:24 and I John 5:14-15, I said, "I'm sure You know where it is, and I believe You will lead me to it, if it is Your will. Just guide my feet, and I'll go in any direction that you choose." I was still praying, while continuing to wander around in circles, and I hadn't even started counting, when I saw it. I didn't see it in the distance, I didn't see it to my left or to my right; it was directly in front of me. And I could tell that it hadn't been left there by some other dog, because it was fresh.
Naturally, I was astounded by the way in which I found it. And since it was in an area that I had already checked before, I found it right in front of my feet, and it happened so soon, I decided to call this a miracle.

To date, God has answered 71% (160/226) of my prayers, and I want to help Him maintain a good record, so I’m still quite selective in deciding when to make a supplication prayer. I know a pastor who claims that he prays for a good parking space each time he goes to the mall. But as for me, I’d rather take a bad parking space and walk to the mall. I just don’t think that’s important enough to bother God.


References

Notes