Sunday, October 13, 2002

Restoring marriages is his business! Pray, Listen, Pray… God wants to use you

#5
Pray, Listen, Pray… God wants to use youJ Restoring marriages is his businessJ
Leah and I were asked to be on a ministry team which prayed for members at the end of each Sunday service. On this particular day a friend of ours came up and asked me if I would be going to the men’s conference the church was having at the black rock conference center. I said that I was thinking about it. He walked away about five paces and came back and informed me that the church had scholarships if I needed it. I thanked him for that information and again informed him that I was thinking about it. I didn’t tell him that I actually did not have the money to go and I surly wasn’t going to take any money. Again after taking a few steps away he came back and said, “and if you need it and don’t take it you have a pride problem!” and he turned and left. Pride? Not me! Really Lord… Pride? I was thinking… then I yelled back at him, “Ok, I’ll take it.”
I spent the weekend with him, a friend of mine and a new fellow I had never met. I’ll call the new fellow Joe. Joe drove me home from the church at the end of the conference. I told my wife about this great guy I wanted her to meet. She came out and said hi for a few minutes and Joe left. She immediately turned to me and said that he was hiding something. No… I said, he’s a great guy.
During the week Joe kept coming on my mind, and I knew that I was to call him, but I did not have his phone number. I would wait to see him in church. That Sunday the pastor talked about a great weekend and the healing that came to many men. But he did say that one man thought that God was telling him that it was ok to leave his wife. What? I couldn’t believe my ears, was he at the same conference I was?
At the end of church Leah and I went up to pray. A woman came up and she began to cry, she couldn’t say anything because she was too upset. Leah and I just prayed for her. Then the thought came to me that she was the wife of Joe. So I asked… and she was. I told her that God told me to call him can I have his number. She told me I could but he won’t pick up, he has been ignoring everyone’s calls, pastors family etc. I said, “If God has asked me to call him… he will pick up.”
The next day I got a call back from Joe. I asked him to meet me for breakfast… and he did. We began to meet every week. He had moved out of the house by this time and was in a relationship with another woman. (He moved right into a neighborhood close to my parents and parent-in-laws… So I could pop in to see hem often.) He had been trying to end his relationship with the other woman for over five years and could not do it. He worked with the church and other brothers and could not break off the relationship so he gave up on ending it.
I prayed over him and met with him for nine or ten months. One day while I was at work I received an e-mail from my father which he forwarded to me. His e-mails are usually jokes and I usually don’t take the time to open them. This one I could not delete for some feelings I was having not to delete it. A few hours passed and I opened the e-mail and it was a joke about Kama Sutra religious activities. I wanted to delete it again but could not. Ok, Lord what is it you want me to know? So I researched the word. Page after page popped up about the religious activities… on the fifth page in the middle of the page was one site concerning witchcraft! Witchcraft???? Is my dad involved in witch craft??? This was not making sense. What is it Lord…. Then Joe’s name came into my mind. It’s Joe? No, it’s the lady Joe has been trying to separate from??? I thought. Lord, I need to talk with Joe. I was going to call him… no… I need to do this in person. Ten minutes later someone knocked on my office door. Come in, I said... Joe opened the door. Joe, I just told the Lord I needed to see you in person. We talked about witchcraft… it turned out that there was a witch in the neighborhood he and his wife lived in. Joe and his wife found out about her when they had gone to the church for counseling five years earlier. The counselor learned this through counseling several marriages from that neighborhood.
Over the next week I prayed for Joe to be out from under the curses of this witch. There was a dramatic separation between him and the woman he could not leave. Joe and his wife have been living happily together for the past 11 years and are doing great things for the Kingdom of GodJ