Prayer Stops the Weather
This is from the book Youth Prays, God Answers by Glenn Coon.
As Nina and Ken kneeled to bring a serious problem before the Lord Ken said, “This will be a prayer of commitment of course.”
“No,” Nina answered with determination, “this will be a prayer of reception.”
“But, Honey,” Ken argued,, “We can’t tell God what to do. I know we need the money we would have gotten for this job, but one doesn’t paint in a heave rain storm. You know that!”
But Nina argued that God could and would hold back the storm if they would pray, asking, believing and claiming Matthew 21:22 ‘All things, whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.’ Malachi 3:8-10 on tithing and Mark 11:24 ‘What things so ever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall have them.’
What Ken didn’t know was that a few months previous when they had suffered a terrible disappointment in an unsuccessful business adventure in the East Nina had written the cheque for tithe but hadn’t mailed it because their bank account was so depleted. Since then things had gone from bad to worse. Now they were two months behind in rent, one month behind in other bills and had received notice from the college that Ken could not complete the semester unless he paid what was owed as well as an advance on the next semester’s fees. Now Nina had promised God that the first thing she would do with the payment for this painting job in Santa Monica was pay all of the tithe owning. And so she prayed, asking God to fulfil his promises, believing that he would, and thanking Him for the promising that they were claiming or receiving good painting weather.
It wasn’t until half way through the painting job when the lady for whom they were working remarked, someone at USC (University of Southern California) must have prayed for good weather for today’s graduation,” that Ken suddenly realised he knew who that someone was and they had truly received the answer to the prayer of reception.
The Los Angeles Times of January 28 1966 read NO RAIN—FORCASTING GOOP BLAMED ON COMPUTERS. “That the predicted heavy rain that never arrived Thursday in Los Angeles was based in good measure on forecasts from a computer near Washing DC and the computer goofed! But Weather Bureau forecaster here won’t let the mechanical brain take all the blame. ‘We goofed too!’ John Frazee admitted. ‘But we talked it over and decided if we had to do it all over again, we would have forecast the very same heavy rains.—After all it was pouring on Catalina Island, where almost ana inch of rain fell Wednesday night and early Thursday before the storm swerved south. Frazee said it would be sheer guess at this point as to what caused the weather system to change…
That evening other types of prayers ascended to the God of heaven, prayers of praise and thanks giving.