Dear God...

By Amitabh Singh

It does not matter to God where you pray. James 1:6 (NLT) mentions how you should pray:

“But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.”

In 1987, I was studying at Calcutta University (India). I would attend early morning classes at St. Xavier’s College and then would work at the Computer Department of our Church during the day. 

One day, my Senior Pastor, whose office was at the end of the corridor, knocked on my glass window and asked me to follow him. I went down the elevator with my Pastor, Mark Buntain and got into his small Fiat car.

We drove to a slum about 15 minutes away from the Church. We got out of the car and he walked inside the slum area. I simply followed him. In the crowded cluster of huts, with no street address or house numbers, I wondered where he was going.

Pastor Mark, like Mother Teresa, was well known in this community. He tucked his head inside a small hut. I looked inside. There was an old women inside the hut who was sick and dying. He asked me to help pick her up and we carried her out. A few from the slum gathered around and helped us get the elderly lady into the car.

Pastor Mark drove the lady to the hospital that was run by our Church. The Emergency Doctor quickly took over and after sometime Pastor Mark looked at me and we both started walking back to the Church office in the adjacent building.

As I was walking with Pastor Mark, I asked him, “Pastor, how did you know this lady needed help.”

He replied, “The Spirit told me.” 

To me this was amazing. How could he be so tuned in to God and listened so clearly to what the Spirit was telling him everyday? 

The secret to what happened in his life during the day was determined by what he would do every morning. Every morning at 4:30 am, you would see Pastor Mark in our Church prayer room. Every day at 6 am, you would see Mother Teresa praying with the nuns in Calcutta. They both knew how to pause and listen to the voice of God.

Likewise, 1 Peter 4:7 reminds us: “The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.”