“Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.” (James 5:16-18)
Five years after serving in World War I, V. Raymond Edmond had graduated from college, was recently married, and a new father, working as a missionary in the high Andes mountains of Ecuador. He had been trying to help the people of small aboriginal villages who were dying of some mysterious malady. He didn’t remember exactly what happened but he was told later that he had come down the mountain on horseback to the town of Riobamba, his home, been stricken with typhus fever, and had been taken by train, in a baggage car, in an all day trip to Guayaquil.
He did not know that his wife had been told to die her wedding dress black, and that his hosts had purchased a coffin to insure that he could be buried quickly after his death because that was the custom and necessity of living in the tropics. He does remember that as he lay in the hospital bed he recalled his mother telling him when he was young, that a person’s life passed before them prior to death, and that was exactly what was happening to him. Let us let him tell you, in his own words, what happened next:
“As the flashback from memory’s chamber faded I felt all alone in a vast world. If there were other human beings in that quiet hospital room, I was not conscious of them. I was utterly alone and acutely aware that in the next instant or two I would be in eternity.
Then it was that I began to be cognizant of something strangely arresting in that place—an atmosphere, an influence, a Presence. It seemed to be on the floor but it covered the area of the room, and was slowly rising to the level of the bed. I could not turn my head to see if it was real or only imaginary; but I was sure it was now reaching me. In just another moment it began to surround me, to engulf and to cover me.
Then I knew what it was, for in those moments I experienced a sweet sense of the love of God in Christ such as I had never known before in all the years of my life. So overwhelming and stupendous was that love that the Life Beyond became ineffably beautiful and infinitely better than any possible condition in this present existence. There followed moments of such sacred, intimate fellowship with Him that it is impossible to attempt to retell it. It is sufficient to say that I have no fear of dying. Heaven is home to the believer, to that one who has become a child of God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
After the day when I waded so far out into the River of Death that I was closer to the other side than to this, there were about two weeks of which I have no recollection and can give no account. As I began to be conscious of being in the Parker Clinic, of the Ecuadorian nurses who cared for me, of my wife and the eight-week-old son who had come into our home, that I was told the story back of my story.
Near Attleboro, Massachusetts, a rather small group had gathered in a Bible conference. In the course of their morning study, they were interrupted by the conference director, Rev. E. Joseph Evans of Newton, Massachusetts, who told of a deepening burden of concern that had come upon him for a missionary in Ecuador, and he requested that they share the prayer burden with him. It was during those hours that, unknown to them, Mrs. Edlam (my wife) had died her wedding dress black, and Mr. Reed had bought a native coffin for me.
Since then I have met friends in New England who were present in that meeting. They have told me that if they should live to be a hundred years old they could never forget their knelling to pray and their agony of spirit in their intercession for me. In the urgency of their petitions they forgot the lunch hour; but by the middle of the afternoon they experienced, they said, a lifting of the spirit with the quiet assurance from heaven that their prayers for the desperate need thirty-five hundred miles away had been answered.” (They Found the Secret by V. Raymond Edman, pp 178-180)
Who has God put on your heart to pray for today? Who are you gathering with on a regular basis to cry out to God? Be still for a few minutes and listen for Him to lead you, and give you the opportunity to be a part of what He is doing to heal the sick, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to save the lost. Start today!
“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me! For my soul trusts in You; And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, Until the calamities have passed by. I will cry out to the God Most High, To God who performs all things for me. He shall send from heaven and save me; He reproaches the one who would swallow me up. God shall send forth His mercy and His truth.” (Psalms 57:1-2)
PRAY
1. O dear precious Lord, speak to me today! Give me Your ear and hear my cries for those who, I know, need you as Savior, those who are sick, those who are downcast, and those who need comforting from Your Holy Spirit.
2. Forgive me of my laziness and help me to start a regular schedule to spend time in prayer for my family, my neighbors, my coworkers, my fellow students, my fellow soldiers, and for strangers you have put in my life.
3. Help me Lord to find others to gather with on a weekly basis to lift up the needs of our church and a lost and dying world.
