Be Careful what you
Pray for
“…A destruction is determined, overflowing with
righteousness." Isaiah 10:22
A friend of
mine was very concerned about her son. She was a very close friend and her
children were almost like my own. I loved them dearly and they loved me. I have
known them since they were babies.
This particular young man seemed to
flounder a bit in his young adult years. He was unhappy at his work and started
spending more and more time with the wrong crowd. His new friends and his
activities while with them were the main source of my friend’s concerns.
My friend had called and e-mailed me off and
on for several weeks with prayer requests for her son. Yet, even with much
prayer being offered, he seemed to be going further and further down the wrong
path. Then on a particular Friday, she called me again making a heartfelt plea
for prayers that God would intervene in her son’s life. I prayed as she had
asked and I knew she was praying too! In addition, I sent e-mails to a couple
of close praying friends asking them to pray also.
Sunday came as usual. My family
attended church as is our normal routine. Sunday afternoon, I received a very
strange phone call. The recorded voice on the other end asked for me by name
saying that I had a call from the local corrections center, or in other words,
the local jail. I yelled for my husband to pick up the phone’s other extension.
I had never received a phone call from jail before. I was confused as to why
anyone in jail would know my name or my phone number and wanted my husband to
be on the phone with me.
My husband and I listened as a
female voice informed me that someone I knew wanted to speak with me and she
was helping him place the call. My friend’s son came on the phone. He had spent
the night in jail because he had been unable to reach his parents. He said he
only had five minutes so he quickly explained that he needed someone to be at
the jail at 9:00 the next morning which was a Monday, with money to bail him
out. He told me that there was nothing any one could do to get him out until
then so he would have to spend another night in jail. I assured him that I
would try to reach his mother and step father, but if I couldn’t reach them,
either my husband or I would be at the jail in the morning. I promised that he
would not be abandoned; someone would be there.
Then I called my friend. She didn’t
answer her phone so I left her a carefully worded message. I told her that I
had heard from her son and I very much needed to talk to her about it. A few
hours later, my friend called me back. As I explained what I knew about the
situation, she began to softly cry. She told me that she had been at church all
morning and afternoon and had gone to bed early the night before. She said she
was going to make some phone calls to his friends and see what else she could
find out.
She called back later with this report. On
Saturday night, her son and some of his friends had attempted to visit a club.
This club had certain days when they did not serve alcohol and would allow
people under the legal drinking age of 21 to attend. Actually her son was 21
but some of the others in his group were not. They thought this was one of the nights
when the club would admit them all. As it turned out, this was not one of those
nights. Her son decided to enter anyway since he was legal age. However, the
man at the door accused him of being underage. He argued belligerently that he
was not underage and showed his license as proof. Because he was so belligerent
or “talking trash” as my friend put it, the man at the door ran a check on the
license.
The check revealed an unpaid
speeding ticket and the police chose to haul him off to jail. He tried to use
his one phone call to reach his mother and have bail posted but her line had a
block against collect calls so his step father was not able to hear anything on
the other end and hung the phone up. But my friend’s son thought his step
father had refused to take his call. Because all of this happened on a Saturday
night, the young man ended up spending two nights in jail over an unpaid
ticket. But the experience stopped him in his tracks and caused him to re-evaluate his life.
My children have always said they
were caught every time they attempted to get away with misbehavior of any kind
because of my prayers. When parents pray, their children better be on
their guard because God is a God who hears prayers. The children of praying
parents will be caught every time!
