When I was impressed to write my new book called Passionate Prayer, it was because, partly by somebody here at this church that shared with me, they pulled me aside the last time I was here and said, “Brenda! These stories need to be in a book.” And they said, “You know, God didn’t just have these miracles and these blessings for you.” And so when I was impressed that God wanted me to write again, some of those stories that I told when I was here last time are in this book. And in fact, this afternoon when I talk with you about Divine appointments I have a praise report like you guys aren’t going to believe. It is awesome what God’s doing. And don’t you just love it when you see the results of passionate prayer? We’re not always going to know the results of passionate prayer while we’re here on this earth. But anytime that God does open up the window and let us see, isn’t that a blessing? And a tremendous blessing.
I want to talk to you about what prayer is. What is passionate prayer? You know, some people have said to me, “What is passionate prayer? Isn’t that just prayer?” Well prayer is talking to our Heavenly Father. I think we all have that figured out, right? We know what prayer is. But do we know how to pray passionately?
I would be willing to say that I bet most people pray hoping that their prayers’ll get answered, not believing that they’ll get answered. There’s a huge difference.
You know, there’s people that pray, they get a family member comes down, they said, “Oh, you know, we’ve got a bad sickness.” Let’s say a brain tumor, because there’s two stories in my book about people with brain tumors that were completely healed. And they get that diagnosis and it’s like, “Oh, oh well, you’re in my prayers.” But are they really thinking that… in their mind, they walk away, and then, “That’s sad. That’s just too bad. Aw, and she was such a good person too.” But did they really go home and lay it before the Lord and pray passionately for that person? That God would work a miracle in their life, if it be His will.
Do you know, someone else told me, they said, “I don’t know why we have to pray anyway, because God knows everything, and if God knows everything, He knows what we’re thinking.” And you know, they’re right about that. God does know our thoughts. But He responds to our prayers. You thought about that? He knows our thoughts, but He responds to our prayers.
Now some of us have a real different idea about prayer. They think, well prayer, we really pray when we need a miracle. You know what? That’s a good thing, when you need a miracle. But that isn’t the reason to pray. And some people just pray when you’re in trouble. In fact, that’s probably when most people pray. But that isn’t the most important reason to pray. Some people pray for soul-winning. They pray that they’re going to go out there and win souls for Jesus. It’s going to shock you guys, but you know what? That’s still not the most important reason to pray. It’s good, but it’s not the most important reason.
The most important reason to pray is to have a personal, intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father. So that we can get to know Him better. So that we talk with Him so frequently that we know His voice. That’s right. If we talk to Him frequently, we will know His voice. It’s not just to get things. It’s not just to have things happen that we want to have happen. It’s not to help us financially. All those things, God is there for us. Believe me, I’m not saying. Don’t walk out of here and say, “Brenda Walsh said we shouldn’t be praying to God about, you know, our finances or anything else.” That’s not what I’m saying.
But our most important reason for prayer should be to get to know our heavenly father. The more we pray to Him, the closer we’ll be to Him. The more our will becomes His will. And when God can work His will in our own lives, you guys just watch. It’s unbelievable what God can do for you.
My little grandson is six years old. And some of you have heard a lot of my Michael stories, haven’t you? I just love that little boy. I’ve got two grandsons now. And my little grandson Michael, he is a prayer warrior. That little boy loves to pray. He’ll call me up and he’ll say, “Gwamma”, he said, “we really need to pray today.” He said, “Boy, mom’s cranky.” He didn’t tell me what he did to make mom cranky, you know. And so, you know, and I’ll have a prayer with him. One time I was out there not long ago, and it was almost time for his birthday. And I took him to Toys-R-Us to give me ideas of what I could get him for his birthday. And so we went from aisle to aisle and I patiently am taking notice of what he’s really attracted to, ‘cause he has a short attention span. I don’t know about your kids, but Michael, I’ll tell you what, he looked at something and it’s really cool for about five minutes, and then it’s gone, he’s on to the next thing. So I want to make sure, I like to take him to the store and if it doesn’t keep him interested in the store, you know, keep on moving.
All of a sudden we got to where all the motorized vehicles are, have you seen those things? And he saw a four-wheeler and he ran over there and he jumped on that four-wheeler and he was making all the vroom-vroom-vroom-vroom sounds and he was up there and he was just… all of a sudden he stopped, he got off the four-wheeler, and he ran to me and he took my hand and he said, “Grandma, grandma, quick. Pray, pray, quick.” I said, “Why honey?” He said, “Grandma, you gotta pray quick.” He said, “I really want this four-wheeler. Ask Jesus to give me this four-wheeler for my birthday.” He said, “You gotta pray quick ‘cause it’s the last one.”
You know, I tried to explain to Michael about how prayer works. But he has a real child-like view of what prayer is about. And I don’t think I still convinced him. I tried to work on it but I don’t think he’s there yet. But I know he loves Jesus. And I know he’s growing.
You know, we all have a baby walk with Jesus, and the more time we spend with Him, the more we communicate with Him, the closer we are to Him. And the more we understand. You know, I pray about everything. I pray and ask God where He wants me to, you know, what He wants me to do. Where He wants me to go. What should I… Lord would You tell me who I need to pray for. Sometimes I don’t even know what to pray for. So when I’m driving those six hours from my house to 3ABN, like I was there all week taping cooking shows with my sisters, you know, I’m thinking about, and I’m praying saying, “Lord, who should I pray for? Who should… lay someone on my mind today that needs prayer.” You know, He always does. He always does!
I like to put my CDs on and have some nice Christian music on and just really just talk with my Heavenly Father. It’s my favorite time to pray. You know, when you have that alone time with Him.
It was on one of those trips from 3ABN to, back to my house, I think it was actually the other direction, and I had prayed that same prayer. I’d asked the Lord to lay somebody on my heart that I should pray for. After I’d already gone through my list, you know, in my mind of who I was praying for, and then I said, “Lord, is there somebody I should be praying for?” And I felt a strong impression to pray for my roommate Jan, who went to Georgia-Cumberland Academy with me. And so, I started praying for Jan. And I didn’t know what the problem was. I said, “Lord, I don’t know why you’ve laid her on my heart, but Lord you do.” And so I just laid her before the Lord, and when I finished praying I just felt strongly impressed that I should call her. So I picked up the phone, I hadn’t talked to her for a long time. And so I picked up the phone to call her, and I said, “Jan, this is Brenda.” And she said, “Brenda?!” And she started bawling. Just bawling. She said, “I can’t believe you called me right at this moment.” She said, “I’m in my…” I didn’t even… This is the thing. When you get to know God’s voice you don’t question when. If I had thought about that, I would say, “Well, it’s too early to call her. She’s a school teacher. She teaches chemistry for high school. She’s supposed to be in school right now. So I’ll call her tonight.” That’s not the way that it works, does it? When the Holy Spirit says move, move! If He say call, call! If He says go, go!
She was a school teacher, but she was home. She was on her knees crying out to the Lord. Now Jan has left the church and it’s been a long time since she has even thought about going back to church. She got burned by some well-meaning Christians in the church that wanted to tell her how short her dress was or how much makeup she had on or how they didn’t like this or that or the other thing that she was doing. You know what brothers and sisters, can I tell you right now, we need to love each other more and judge each other less. Let’s just love each other to Jesus. And leave the rest to God. And so she was discouraged, because here she was at home in her bedroom, she’s on her knees, she’s crying out to the Lord because, here she’s been a, she’s an incredible chemistry teacher. I don’t think I’d have made it through school if she hadn’t helped me with the math and geometry and all that in my room. And here she’s taught for all these years, 27 years she’s taught, and never had an incident. But there was some type of chemical reaction in the lab that there was a minor injury, one of the students got injured, it was minor. And she went to the first aid thing and treated him. So she was very shocked when she got called into the office next day by the principal and said, “You’re suspended until the investigation is finished. But the parents of this girl have filed a complaint against you. They said that, you know, she was seriously hurt, they’ve taken her to the doctor, and that you never lifted a finger to help her.” And all these accusations. And she said, “Brenda, none of that was true.” She said, “I went right away to help her.” And she said, “It wasn’t even a serious injury, but I got the first aid kit and I did what I needed to do and she was fine.” And she said, “I’ve never had a cross word with the student.” And she said, “I can’t imagine.” She’s laid off, and they told her this was serious enough charges that she would lose her job. And she was getting ready to go to the meeting. There was a, they were having a big meeting of the school board and they were going to determine whether or not she was going to have a job. And she was on her knees pleading and praying for God to help her. She said, “All I could think of Brenda, was the nights and nights that we prayed together in the room every night.” We never went to bed at night without praying. And she hadn’t grown up with prayer like that and so she treasured those times. And if she had to study late and had to come back to the room later, I’d get up out of the bed and I would go and pray with her at night. And she remembered those prayers. And so she was on her knees pleading with God to be with her when I called her. Is God’s timing perfect? Is it absolutely perfect?
And so I said, “Well Jan, let’s go to the Lord in prayer right now.” She said, “But Brenda, you don’t understand. I need a miracle!” She said, “I’m going to lose my job.” And she said, “I can’t imagine not teaching.” And she said, “You know I’ve given my life for these students.” And she said, “If you get fired from school it’s really hard to get another job.” I said, “Jan, we’re not even going to think that way. If you need a miracle, we’re going to pray for a miracle. Let’s pray.” I said, “Let’s just pray!” She goes, “I’m already on my knees!” I said, “And good. Let’s go.” I said, “I’m driving, but God can here me when I’m praying and I’m driving.” And so I pleaded and I prayed with the Holy Spirit, first of all to be with Jan. To wrap His arms, for God to just wrap His arms around her. Let her know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not alone. That God was with her.
And then I prayed for that meeting. And I prayed for the hearts to be touched before the people ever got there, that were going to make that decision on Jan’s career. I said, “Lord, if it be Your will. I’m asking for a miracle, Lord, that this meeting will not even take place.” When we got through praying Jan was still crying and she was thanking me and she said, “Well”, she said, “not even God can do that, Brenda.” I said, “Jan, don’t under-estimate God.” I said, “Don’t lose, don’t put so much faith in people that you’ve lost your faith with God.”
Don’t look to people. Don’t hold anybody up on a pedestal. Don’t hold up anybody. I don’t care if it’s your pastor or the head elder or somebody you really respect in the church. I don’t care if it’s somebody on 3ABN. Nobody’s on a pedestal. Only God. Only God.
Well, you can imagine. I went ahead and went to 3ABN and I’m still talking to other people and praying with other people on the way and so… And when I’m taping my cell-phone’s off. So you can imagine my surprise when I got the email the very next day. It’s in the book. It was such an incredible… Guess what? She got there. The girl had a change of heart. She decided to tell the truth. She told the principal all about it, that is was all made up, that it wasn’t none of it true, and the meeting was cancelled. She didn’t have to go to the meeting. Isn’t God good? And she thought even God couldn’t do that. You know, we put so many limits on what God can do.
There is power in prayer. There is something special to be said about passionate prayer. God knows when we’re just talking to Him. We get so in our rut of just praying down our list and it’s almost like we’re in just remote control, you know, with our prayers we pray every night, and most of us just think that night-time’s the time to pray. We forget that God knows when we’re just talking to Him, or He knows when we’re pleading with Him. He knows when we’re passionately praying to Him and talking to Him. Our Heavenly Father knows.
And I can tell you first hand what passionate prayer can do. Because, when I had just finished this book called Passionate Prayer, and I had sent it off to Pacific Press. It is at the press ready for the final formatting right before it’s ready to be printed. They send me a final copy and that’s what goes to press. And it was right before I’m to receive the final copy. I am actually at 3ABN with my sisters. We were taping some cooking shows. In fact, on Wednesday they’re going to air this very show I’m talking about. It’s on Italian cuisine. We were at 3ABN taping this program and we were in the middle of the program. We only had two recipes left and we would have been done with the show. And all of a sudden the director, Helena Martin, came over the intercom and said, “Brenda, can you please come to the control room, please?” I looked at my sisters like, “What’d I say? Usually it’s Linda that says something.” I’m like, “What’d I do?” And they’re looking like, “I don’t know.” So I said, “Ok.” So I went to the control room. But before I could get to the control room the director had met me at the door. She said, “Brenda, you have an emergency phone call.” She said, “You can take it in the green room. Call your husband right away.” Well, you get one of those calls and what happens? Your adrenaline starts going, right? My heart starts pumping. I could hardly dial the number. I dialed the number and I heard my husband’s voice. And he was so choked up he could hardly tell me. He said, “Brenda.” He said, “Our little grandson Jason.” He’s only 19 months old. He said, “He’s just been rushed to the hospital. They found a staph bacteria in his blood. They said he’s septic. It doesn’t look good. He may not make it.” And I am just, aw, I just can’t even, I can’t even. I said, “You know, I’m coming home. I’ll come home as soon as I can.” He says, “You need to get there. You need to get there as soon as you can.” And so I hung up the phone, and my sisters by that time had come in, running in afterwards to see what the matter was, and as soon as I told them I just burst out in tears and they just covered me with their arms and we shut the door to the green room and we just poured out our hearts to the Heavenly Father right then and there. And we prayed passionately for little Jason.
My Kids Time assistant Brenda Abbott was there and helping us prepare food and things and I said, “Brenda, can you get me the next flight out to Boston.” I knew I wouldn’t be able to, here it is in the evening, I know I’m going to have to drive six hours to Knoxville. I said, “Get me the first flight out in the morning.” So she went, took off on the computer and the internet to try to find me a flight, and Helena said to me, she said, “Brenda, we don’t have to finish the show.” And she said, you know, here I am bawling my eyes out, my make-ups all ruined and everything, and I said, “No, I can’t get there til in the morning, I know that.” I said, “Let me finish the last two recipes.” And I said, “And I will get on the road to make that flight out.” And she said, “Are you sure?” And I said, “Yes, because I know God’s going to get me through it.” And so my sisters came in again. Now this time, not just to pray for Jason, but to pray that God would give us the joy, because if anybody has seen any of our cooking programs, you know that we cut up and have a lot of good fun on those programs, don’t we? And so, it wouldn’t be very much fun if they opened up five, four, three, two, one, and there I am bawling my eyes out. So I asked God to give me that joy in my heart. I had just heard that my little grandson may not make it. That little grandson that is so precious to me. And we got down on our knees and we prayed. Linda prayed the most wonderful precious prayer. And she prayed that God would give us the joy in our hearts that we needed to finish those programs.
And as soon as I knew Brenda was working on my tickets, we went back in there, and I fixed up my makeup, and we got in there and I was making Tuscan egg-plant roll-ups. And to do that, to get these recipes done on the program for you, it’s only an hour show, so we have a lot of things we have to already do before we go on the air. And I had to pre-boil these egg-plant strips that I was going to roll up in the recipe before we could start taping. And do you realize how long it takes for a watched pot to boil? Whoo! Now I know why they say that, you know, a watched pot never boils. I mean we are waiting and waiting, and everybody’s sitting around. Now the whole crew has been praying ‘cause now they all know about Jason. We’re setting up, and I’m waiting, and all of a sudden, I’m looking at this pot, I’ve checked it a million times, it is just not boiling. And all I can see is little Jason laying in that bed. And Cynda took one look at me and knew I was getting ready to lose it. And she immediately went into comedic role. I mean, she went in and put a show for the whole crew. She had us laughing until tears were almost rolling down our cheeks. And she kept going, even our general manager, Molly Steenson, happened to come in and she got Molly in the act. And it was, I mean, the people are still talking about it, I’m sure. And I think the cameras are rolling just for blackmail purposes later. And they tell me they really taped that. But here’s Cynda, she’d had a migraine headache all day. The last thing she felt like doing was putting on a comedy show, but she did it because she loved me.
We got through that tape and Brenda had all the car packed and ready to go. We jumped in there, raced that six hours home, got home, unpacked, repacked. My husband helped me load up the suitcases for the airport, rushed to the airport, get to the airport by four-thirty in the morning, and take that next flight out. I was in Boston at nine o’clock. In time for the rounds for the doctors to come through. For them to tell me the good news was that they felt like they had a false positive from a contaminated blood sample. That they didn’t feel like he had staph. But the bad news was they didn’t know what he had. And to add to this, my little grandson had not grown since his 15 month old checkup. Not at all.
Now for any of you that are in the medical world, you know that that’s not a good thing. That there’s measured growth spurts between your, in that toddler stage, those first two years of life is critical. And we knew something was wrong. Jason had quit eating. When I had flown out there earlier, you know, four months before, I had tried to offer him everything, and he went from a little healthy boy that would eat anything, I mean, and he’d take it out of your hand to eat it, to not wanting anything. Even to give him a little bit of formula. The pediatrician said well at least you put him back on formula, give him some formula, so he can get some nutrients. He wasn’t even drinking much of that.
And so this was a little boy that had not grown since his 15 month old checkup. He’s now 19 months old. So the doctors are perplexed. They don’t know if they’re dealing with one issue that has to do with the weight thing, and not growing, or if it’s a separate issue. And the doctor from Children’s Hospital in Boston said, she said, “I suspect that we’re dealing with two different things here. I don’t know what is causing the growth, you know, lack of growth. I think that’s something else that’s different. I’m not sure. I’m being honest, because we don’t know what’s going on. And we can’t treat him ‘cause we don’t know what’s going on.” She said, “So, it might be that, but I suspect that we’re dealing with something different. But we don’t know what.” And this is a little boy that when I walked in, that could not even roll over by himself.
He was so weak. And he put his little hands up to me and said, “Gwamma.” And then squealed in pain. And my daughter Becky just fell into my arms. And she said, “Mom,” she said, “can you go get Michael? My girl-friend came and picked her up at the emergency room, but I know he’s scared.” She goes, “I will worry a lot less if I know you have him.” She said, “There’s nothing you can do here.” She said, “As you heard, the doctors don’t have a clue. They don’t know what’s going to happen. They don’t know, we’re just waiting.” All his veins had collapsed. He had black and blue marks everywhere where they had blown every vein he had. And they’d finally had, they were almost going to have to do a cut-down to get an IV in him but they found one vein for an IV. And so I had prayer with Becky, and I went to go get Michael. And I spent the whole day making sure that little boy was happy. And I’m having to be strong for my grandson. I’m having to be strong for my daughter. And I haven’t had any sleep all day long.
And so, when I took little Michael out to eat, they were giving out free helium balloons, and he picked out a green one, his favorite color. And then he looked at the man. He pulled on his sleeve and he said, “Excuse me, sir. Can I have a balloon for my brother? He’s in the hospital, you know.” Man didn’t know. He said, “Well yes, honey.” And he said, “I think he’d like the yellow one.” And so he said, “Ok.” So he gave him his yellow balloon. And we got in the car and Becky called and said, “Before you go and take Michael home to put him to bed, why don’t you stop by the hospital so Michael can see his brother and won’t be so afraid, and I can explain things to him.” And I said, “Ok, that sounds good.” So we pulled up to the parking lot at the hospital and before I could open the door he said, “Grandma, wait a minute.” And I said, “What honey?” He said, “Grandma, here. Will you take my balloon?” And he had his green one. He said, “Would you say a prayer for Jason?” He said, “And I’m not going to keep this balloon.” I said, “You’re not, honey? Green’s your favorite color.” He said, “No, I want to give this one to Jesus. I want you to say a prayer and then we’re going to give it to Jesus.” And so I held that balloon, and I prayed for his little brother. I prayed that God would work a miracle in his life. To restore his little brother to health if it be His will. Then we got out of that car, and I handed Michael that green balloon. And we stood there and it was the most clear night. You could see all the stars. The heavens were just so clear, not a cloud in sight. And Michael took that little balloon, and he kissed it, and he said, “Thank you Jesus.” And then he let it go. And we stood there. And we just watched up in the heavens until we could see it no more. The last little sight of it was gone. And then Michael came over and he took my hand and said, “Ok, Grandma. We can go now. Jesus has it now.” And I said, “Yes honey, I believe he does.”
And so we walked into the hospital room and I could see Michael’s eyes were really big. He saw all the medical equipment there and his little brother with the IV, and they had it on his leg, and so they had an IV board wrapped onto it so Jason wouldn’t take it out. And he looked at all the monitors and everything going, and you could tell… Michael talks a mile a minute, like his grandma. So you would think he was so quiet. He was just taking it all in and I was worried about him. So when we said goodnight, and we were headed out of the hospital and I had him by the hand, he was still quiet. And I wanted him to talk about his feelings. I didn’t want him to have that all bottled up into him, so I said, “Michael.” I said, “Honey, are you afraid and are you scared because of what you saw. Are you worried about your little brother?” I will never forget what Michael said to me, to this day. I will never forget it. He looked at me with the most confused expression on his face. He said, “Grandma. Of course not. What are you thinking? We prayed to Jesus, didn’t we?” I want that kind of faith. I pray for that kind of faith.
That night after I tucked Michael in and I finally was by my bedside, I hadn’t slept now in over 38 hours. I was totally physically and emotionally drained. Exhausted. And I finally fell on my knees by the side of the bed and cried passionately to my Heavenly Father on Jason’s behalf. And when I finished praying, I sat up on my bed, the side of my bed, and now the tears that I’d held back all day long, that I’d been strong for everybody else, finally came out. And I mean in buckets. I mean the Hoover dam couldn’t have put a stop to them. And as I’m just, you know, the devil likes to work on our unbelief too when we’re tired, doesn’t he? And we’re tired, and I was so drained and he knows our weaknesses, and I’m just sobbing and still pleading with God. I’ve been on my knees for, I don’t know how long. And now I’m still just pleading and praying with God.
All of a sudden, my blackberry. Does anybody know what a blackberry is, you know, that gets email messages and phones? My blackberry started, it vibrates and it goes zzz-zzz, like that when I have an email. And I heard my blackberry go zzz-zzz. And so I picked up my blackberry and I could see it said, “Dear Miss Brenda.” And it said, and she went on to tell me how she was praying for my grandson Jason. And she even had a prayer right there. And I was like, “Oh Jesus, You know just what we need. Your timing is perfect. Thank you Heavenly Father for this. I’m going to let her know, I’m going to, I’m going to reply right now. Let her know how You have used her Lord, to strengthen my faith.” And I started to hit the reply button, but another email went zzz-zzz-zzz. So I read the next one. And it was somebody from India that was emailing saying they were praying for Jason. And then the email went off again. zzz-zzz. And it was somebody from China. And somebody from Russia. I couldn’t believe it. For an hour I sat in my bed. I was getting about a hundred emails an hour. And they were just coming in so fast I couldn’t believe it. One right after the other. And yet here it was, right in my hand. One man had given me so many Bible promises to cling on to. Faith sustaining promises. And after an hour, now I am just, I can hardly see straight. And I held that in my hand and I said, “Thank you, Jesus.”
This little boy is bathed in so much prayer. The devil doesn’t have a chance. I know without a doubt that he’s covered with Your blood, that he’s covered with Your love. That Your grace and mercy is going to win out over anything. I don’t care what the doctor’s are telling me. So you can imagine what I felt like the next morning when I got to the hospital, and there is Jason sitting up playing with his toes. He looks, “Hi gwamma. Want to play toys?” You bet I do. I couldn’t believe it. They don’t even know. They couldn’t believe it either.
There’s not time to tell you about all the things that happened. But I had an email that morning when I’d gotten up before I went to the hospital from Hal Steenson in our pastoral department at 3ABN. He said, “Dear Brenda, I want you to know that I activated the 3ABN prayer chain on Jason’s behalf. I let everybody on our prayer chain know that Miss Brenda’s grandson needed passionate prayer.” And he said, “I want you to know we have over 500 people on our prayer chain from 186 different countries around the world. That will be praying 24 hours a day for your grandson.”
Is there, is there power in prayer? Does God know when we’re praying passionately? Or does He know when we’re just talking? When we’re just reciting something we memorized? God knows when we’re pleading with Him.
When Bobby Davis from 3ABN, one of our editors and employees there, called me up to check on to see how Jason was doing, and I am bubbling over, I am just going over the praises and I said, “You won’t believe it.” And I’m telling him all about what God did, and all about the prayers, because guess what? The whole next day those emails just kept coming in. In fact, I couldn’t even distinguish the emails that people were trying to get critical ones to me. There were just so many buzzing in all the time I couldn’t believe it. Do you know those emails are still coming in? They’re still coming in. There are still people praying for Jason.
When I told Bobby about this, Bobby said, “Brenda, this story has got to be in your book.” He spent like six hours helping me edit it, and he said, “Brenda, you’ve got to have this.” I said, “Bobby, it’s too late.” He said, “Have you called them, Brenda? Do you know for sure it’s too late?” He said, “Let me tell you what. God’s timing is perfect.” He said, “This story needs to be in the book.” He said, “Your book isn’t printed yet ‘cause this story has to be in it.” And I said, “Well, you know, I just assume.” He says, “Brenda, listen. Listen to what you preach.” I said, “Ok, I’m going to call them.” And so I called Russ Holt, vice-president at Pacific Press, and I told him about what happened, and I said, “Russ. Is there any time? Is it too late? Is there even room in the book left?” It’s a big book. It’s a lot bigger than my other one. ‘Cause there’s a lot of praises worked in there. And so I said, “Is there even room?” He said, “Brenda, for a praise report like that,” he said, “we’re going to make room. Stop the presses.” And he said, “You’ve got to get that to me now.” My husband and I, my husband had driven up there, so instead of flying back I drove with him back. I had my laptop in my lap and I was writing fast and furious. We didn’t talk much on that trip, did we honey? ‘Cause I was writing. And I zapped that email off, that chapter off to Pacific Press. And guess what? It’s the last chapter in the book. It wasn’t supposed to be fifteen chapters. It’s supposed to be sixteen. And it’s called More Passionate Prayer. And I’ve got little Jason’s picture in there. Because I want you to see the results of passionate prayer.
You know our Heavenly Father is so full of love, grace and mercy. There is nothing better than having Jesus as your Best Friend. I pray that you will make Jesus your Best Friend. I pray that you will make Him your passionate prayer Warrior. That you will pray to Him. That you won’t just hear of bad news in your family and just go, “Oh, that’s too bad.” But that you will plead with your Heavenly Father to intervene. I pray that each one here will have a closer prayer walk with Jesus. Because there’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like it.
I love Jesus so much. He has saved me so many times. What I have been through, I shouldn’t even be alive and be here in front of you today, except for my precious Heavenly Father’s love, grace and mercy. He has done so much for me. And He just says, “Brenda, just love Me.” I want you to know, I love Jesus. I want you to have that passionate prayer walk with Jesus.
Hymn of Praise: #487, In the Garden Scripture: Jeremiah 33:3 Hymn of Response: #483, I Need Thee Every Hour
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Sermon at McDonald Road transcribed by Steve Foster 5/25/07