When God sends someone your way for prayer …

Life had not worked out the way that the middle-aged woman thought it would. No longer married, no longer in her suburban home, her minor children had moved hundreds of miles away to a western state with their father and the hotel job she found to support herself paid the meager salary of $12,000. She did not understand how or why, but for seven months she remained stuck in that job at the hotel, struggling to make ends meet with no other job opportunities opening for her.
She found a room to rent in the home of another, struggling single woman whose children had grown up and left an empty bedroom available. Economic hard times had hit her landlady’s business with a vengeance, nearly closing it for lack of activity, but she had been able to keep her home and used one room as an office and rented the extra bedroom. Not that the office served much use as the weeks and months piled up and the phone remained silent.
The two had much in common until the landlady’s office phone began ringing. Her business increased over night and continued to increase to the point that she considered hiring an assistant to help with the paperwork.
The renter continued to put out applications in search of finding some way to use her experience and education, but month after month passed and nothing happened in the job market.
Nothing.
Not until she heard the rest of the story about her landlady’s changes in business.
During a family visit, the landlady pulled out an earlier column I had written telling about the day the landlady took her dog for a walk in the park and met a teenager who asked if she could pray for her, and if so, for what?
“Certainly. My business is not doing well,” the landlady answered.
The young woman prayed for this total stranger and the two parted their ways. The next business day she received two phone calls providing her with half a week of work. The rest of the week and subsequent weeks found herself profitably occupied.
The renter’s children came to visit just before Christmas and after they returned to their father a deep remorse settled over the renter. The landlady noticed the sadness.
“Would you like me to pray for you?” the landlady asked.
“Yes. I was a commercial loan originator with 21 loans in the works and not one went through. I lost a six figure income. I have sent out a hundred job applications and most don’t even acknowledge the effort.”
So the landlady, took her renter’s hand, bowed her head and prayed for the other woman.
A few days later, the renter came home one evening and said, “Guess what! I have a job interview and I think this is going to be the one that I get. I don’t know how or why, I just know.”
And it was. The interview went well  with a promotional agency that needed someone familiar with the hotel business to come to their head quarters and help set up conventions and conferences. They had been looking for someone for six months. All those months spent working in the low paying job at the hotel had provided her with the experience she needed for the opening they had.
“The headquarters is 20 minutes from my children!” the renter happily reported. “When you told me about the prayer and your business increasing I thought ‘yeah, I wish something like that would happen to me’ . . . and now it has!”
“Now you have a story to tell,” the landlady said.
“No,” said the renter “Now, I have a testimony.” Within the month, she had resigned her position at the hotel, packed her bags, found an apartment and had moved to the better paying job within minutes of her children.
Before she left, her landlady said, “The day will come when God will send someone your way for prayer. Don’t forget to take their hand and do so right then.” She said she would.
And when she does, she will glorify God through the answered prayer in her own life, as she  experiences Christ’s promise in John 14:13-14, “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”