Prayer Power

Mighty in Intercession
By Petey Prater

May I depart from my usual PrayerPower format for this column? I want to share with you about a friend who died this week and why her death is important to you as well as me.

My dear friend and intercessory prayer partner, Susan Standley, went home to Heaven September 22, 2007, in the early hours of the morning. Without so much as a wave of her hand she was lifted into the arms of Jesus, the One she loved and served all her life. Like David, weeping for his friend, Jonathon, I cry, “How the mighty have fallen!” (2 Sam. 1:19)

Susan was a spiritual giant. Her consuming passion, her life call, was prayer. Pain and disease marked her life, but nothing kept Susan from prayer. Whether she was seated in her wheelchair or at the dialysis clinic, she was seated with Christ in prayer. Susan learned the secret of this faith acrostic:

Father
Answers
Intercessors
Travailing in
Prayer

Susan prayed because she knew God would hear and answer her: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14,15). She learned early that the greatest rewards come to those who make time for prayer.

With others and alone, Susan prayed and watched God do miracles. Marriages were restored, the sick were healed, difficult problems were solved. Hundreds of people have been touched and changed because she took time to call to God for their needs. Yet her own illnesses were not healed. Instead she was given grace to live daily with pain and debility. Aren’t the ways of God a mystery?

Susan’s loss is more than the loss of a friendship to me; our world has lost a mighty prayer warrior. Scripture says … “the people who know their God shall prove themselves strong and shall stand firm and do exploits for God” (Dan.11: 32).

Who will do exploits now for God? Who will step into her gap in the prayer wall and weep over the sins of the world? Who will take Susan’s place at God’s altar crying out for the needy, broken ones?

Are you a child of God? Are you willing to serve the Father in prayer as He calls and enables you? The rewards are stunning! My amplified Bible says: “The secret of the sweet, satisfying companionship of the Lord have they who fear (revere and worship) Him, and He will show them His covenant and reveal to them its deep inner meaning” (Ps. 25: 14). Another translation says that He tells His secrets to the upright.

Would you like to know God’s secrets? Join His prayer team. Step into Susan’s shoes with us. I think she’ll be cheering from Heaven as we ‘altar’ our world.

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Petey Prater is a Beaverton, OR writer and speaker who can be reached at peteyprater@yahoo.com. She writes poetry, articles, and devotionals and has contributed to two books:

Prayers for Troubled Times compiled by Jeannie St John Taylor, AMG Publishers and
101 Stories of Answered Prayer by Jeannie St John Taylor and Petey Prater, AMG Publishers