A small
congregation in the foothills of the Great Smokies built a new
sanctuary on a piece of land willed to them by a church member.
Ten days
before the new church was to open, the local building inspector
informed the
pastor that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the
building.
Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would
not be able
to use the new sanctuary. Unfortunately, the church with its
undersized lot
had used every inch of their land except for the mountain against
which it
had been built. In order to build more parking spaces, they would
have to
move the mountain out of the back yard. Undaunted, the pastor
announced the
next Sunday morning that he would meet that evening with all
members who had
"mountain moving faith." They would hold a prayer
session asking God to
remove the mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide
enough money
to have it paved and painted before the scheduled opening
dedication service
the following week. At the appointed time, 24 of the
congregation's 300
members assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours.
At ten
o'clock the pastor said the final "Amen". "We'll
open next Sunday as
scheduled," he assured everyone. "God has never let us
down before, and
I believe He will be faithful this time too." The next
morning as he was
working in his study there came a loud knock at his door. When he
called
"come in", a rough looking construction foreman
appeared, removing his hard
hat as he entered. "Excuse me, Reverend. I'm from Acme
Construction
Company over in the next county. We're building a huge shopping
mall.
We need some fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of
that
mountain behind the church? We'll pay you for the dirt we remove
and pave
all the exposed area free of charge, if we can have it right away.
We can't
do anything else until we get the dirt in and allow it to settle
properly."
The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally
planned and
there were far more members with "mountain moving faith"
on opening Sunday
than there had been the previous week!
Would you have shown up for that prayer meeting? Some people say
faith
comes from miracles. But others know: MIRACLES COME FROM FAITH! |
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