We underestimate the power released when we pray.  While a student in Dunedin studying to become a minister, I was given the responsibility once a month to lead the service at Tuapeka Mouth Presy church on the Clutha River.  On the Saturday evening before I was to drive to Tuapeka Mouth, I received a phone call from the lady who on Sunday mornings normally did what the church called intercessions.  Basically, it was corporate prayer by the church for all that was going on around the world.  To me it seemed like someone had read the week’s newspapers the day before and summarized the week’s news as a prayer.  I turned up the next morning with a small whiteboard and asked them what they wanted prayer for.  The request was met with silence.  I think the church may have been stunned with someone breaking protocol.  Eventually a farmer yelled out, “We don’t want any snow.”  I wrote ‘No snow” on the board, and said, “There is a problem here.  In Dunedin where I live at the top of Signal Hill, I want snow, or least my kids do.”  So we prayed, or I prayed, “God we want no snow this year … Amen.”  I’m not elaborate when it comes to prayer.  I just say it. I’ve figured out, God listens more to heart more than he does to flashy words.  It is normal in inland South Otago to have snow at least once during winter.  That year the snow came but it landed in south Canterbury and not south Otago.  It was so bad in the south Canterbury region that the transmission lines broke with no power for a week.  You can verify the event by looking back through the papers.  Later, for something to talk about in a verbatim with my tutors at the training school I brought up the topic.  My tutor said, “Dennis I have a problem with what you have just said.”  “What?” I asked.  “Don’t you think that it is unjust that the farmers in south Canterbury suffered hardship while the farmers in South Otago didn’t.”  I thought for a moment, and blurted out, “They didn’t ask.”  Jesus said, “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you” (Mt 7:8).  I guess I dared to ask.  At the time I prayed believing for an answer, but I forgot about it.  But it left a residue in my soul.  When the snow struck in south Canterbury, I knew, ‘that’s it,” I thought.  V1100erbalizing faith be it prayer, or just conversation, turns huge wheels in the world we can’t see, and continual prayer gives those wheels momentum.  I didn’t know what I was releasing.  Maybe you don’t know what you are releasing when you pray.  Can we dare to believe that our prayers are powerful to unleash God to act in ways we can scarcely imagine.

Den