The God Who Answers Prayer

I took my troubles to the LORD; I cried out to him, and he answered my prayer.

Psalm 120:1

Psalm 120 contains a wonderful promise: when we take our troubles to the Lord and turn to him, he will answer our prayer. A wonderful illustration of this promise was a mother named Dorothy, whose three sons served in World War II. She was most concerned about her youngest, Jack. Though he grew up in a strong Christian family, in high school he drank and partied with a wild group of guys.

Jack got his orders to ship out for service in Germany, and when Dorothy heard him telling his brothers he couldn’t wait to taste all the German beers, she began to cry out to God. Every day she prayed for protection for her sons in combat. But she prayed especially for her youngest son: “Oh, Lord, may every glass of beer he tries taste like bitter gall!” Though she received only a few letters from Jack in four years, she kept praying.

Soon after the war was over, Jack came home, gave his mom a huge hug, and sat down to a home-cooked lunch. Throughout the meal, Jack talked about his experiences and then suddenly said, “The strangest thing that happened, Mom, was that every time I drank a different type of German beer, they all tasted like bitter gall, so disgusting I couldn’t drink them.”

Dorothy got out her prayer journal and showed her son what she had asked God, keeping Jack safe but also guarding him from the destructive influence of alcohol. As he looked at the four years of entries, he realized he’d felt the influence of his mother’s prayer thousands of miles away. He was so amazed at God’s power that on that very day Jack committed himself to Christ and eventually became a pastor who served God the rest of his life.

Lord, grant me grace to cry out to you when I face troubles. Thank you that when we cry out to you, you hear and answer our prayers in your timing and for your purpose. In Christ’s name, amen.

If [the children of God] desire anything for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it. Oh how good, kind, gracious, and condescending is the One with Whom we have to do!

George Müller(1805–1898), German evangelist and orphanage director