“Twenty-eight People Killed” was the headline on the news the other day. Kentucky got hit hard by an EF5 tornado that lasted over an hour and devastated the town of London, Kentucky. Lets keep them in out prayers.
It reminded me of another news article that I had read a couple years ago of an EF4 that hit a small Alabama community. The article was put out by one of the chaplains from the Billy Graham rescue ministry. He was describing how houses had just disappeared and all that was left were the foundations.
But in the midst of all the devastation, he shared a story of God’s mercy and the power of prayer. In the middle of one neighborhood, there was one house that still had its closet standing on the foundation. All the other houses around it and the other parts of this house were gone, but here stood a closet. It was still standing with no other braces to hold it up.
This is something you don’t normally see, so the chaplain did some research and asked around about this mystery. Everything had been taken by the tornado. They say it had a wind speed of 170 MPH. Nothing was left except for this closet. As he began to ask around, he found out that a family had hidden in this closet during the storm and miraculously survived.
He found some of the family and they told him it was their prayer closet that their grandmother used to go in and pray for hours. They described how when they were in the closet during the storm they were praying for God to save them and have mercy on them. They thought they were going to be taken as the house began to fall apart, but they said the closet never moved. It held fast.
Maybe you don’t have the money to build a concrete storm shelter but you could turn a closet into a tornado buster. A Prayer Closet. A place where you can call heaven down and see God do great and mighty things.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:6 “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
Do you have a place where you go to get a hold of God? God wants you to put away all distractions and be still and know that He is God. He wants to hear from you. Your heart. James chapter 4 says “we have not because we ask not.”
Maybe, it’s not a tornado that’s bearing down on you, but everyone has storms in their lives. Don’t forget about the prayer closet in Lee County, Alabama that overcame a tornado. Don’t forget about the power of a praying closet. The power of a praying grandmother, or family that takes the time to get a hold of an all-powerful God.
— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Matthew Spoonhour is pastor of First Baptist Church, Monroe.
