During a recent visit to Chapel Pointe, Christian & Missionary Alliance (The Alliance) President Jonathan Schaeffer shared this message of encouragement with our residents. The transcript below has been formatted for readability. We encourage you to watch the whole service to learn more about The Alliance and to hear from everyone who participated in this special visit.

A New Mission Field

I'd like to share for a few moments from a letter written by Jesus' half-brother. But before I do, I want to recall a conversation I had with my mother.

My mother and dad are parents of nine children with 40 grandchildren, and now 68 great-grandchildren. So the Schaeffers are doing their part to be fruitful and multiply!

But my mom was discouraged.

My mom was diagnosed with Parkinson's. She could no longer drive, and she led two Bible studies every week up until she was about 81 years old. When she got Parkinson's, she could no longer do that.

I was sitting with her one day, and she said, "Jonathan, I just can't do anything. I'm very discouraged."

[Earlier today, while visiting Chapel Pointe residents], Ida mentioned how she had the same kind of discouragement when she came here. [Someone encouraged her], and said:

When Jonathan asked the audience what types of ministry God has given to them in this season of life, they answered:

• Prayer
• Encouragement
• Giving out the gospel Gospel as I walk
• Availability

Jonathan continued:

The first two you mentioned were the two that my mom and I landed on: prayer and encouragement.

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The Ministry of Prayer and Encouragement

My mom said, "Well, how am I going to encourage people? I live by myself."

We got her an iPad.

She said, "I'll never learn that thing."

She did. And she wrote notes every day.

With Parkinson’s, she could no longer write, but she could type, and my mom would send them. I'd have people come up to me in our church and say, "Do you know who I got a letter from? Your mother wrote me a note of encouragement and she prayed!"

And she would pray for people.

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The Power of Prayer

I'd like to turn to a passage in James chapter 5. This is a word of encouragement. And here's what we read:

"The prayer of a righteous person" — There's two descriptors — "is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being even as we are."

In another translation, he says, "He was a man just like us." The writer wants us to know that there was nothing extraordinary about Elijah.

“He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again, he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops.”

Again, he says:

Sometimes people [talk about] the power of prayer. But it's actually the power of the One to whom we pray, right?

The prayer is all about our Great Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we pray, we're inviting Him to accomplish his will among us.

The powerful ministry of prayer might be that when we get to Heaven, we'll say, “[Prayer] was the greatest impact of my life.”

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Learning to Ask

Billy Graham has been one of my heroes. …

Billy Graham said, “I think when I get to Heaven, I believe that my greatest regret will be this: that the Heavenly Father had so much more that he wanted to do for which I never asked him.”

[James] said these little words in James: “You have not because what you ask not.”

Billy wondered if the Lord would say, “Oh, Billy, there was so much more I wanted to do. If only you would have asked.”

I love the words of Jesus when he said to keep on asking, seeking, keep on knocking.

You have a father in heaven!

He says:

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What Does It Mean to Be Righteous?

Now there is a qualifier here.

It doesn't just say prayers are powerful and effective. It says the prayers of a righteous person.

That does not mean that Elijah never sinned. It doesn't mean that we're going to be people who have a perfect record in the past.

It means that we've been made right by the Father in Heaven through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us that we could become the righteousness of God.

You remember the corresponding side of that in Psalm 66? The psalmist says, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”

So, we come before Him with a heart that's been cleansed - a heart that is right with him. And he says when you come with that kind of posture that the prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective.

You've seen it and I've seen it, right?

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God Hears Prayer

Now God's timetable is not always ours.

[My wife] Mary grew up in a very different home than I did. Mary grew up in a home where her father left when she was four. He was married five times. With Mary’s mother, there were alcohol and drugs in the home.

Mary was the first one in her family to come to Jesus. When she was a university student, a girl boldly shared her faith with Mary.

Mary came down to the college where I was attending, Colombia Bible College. We both were passionate for reaching people who didn't know Jesus.

We prayed for Mary's parents. We prayed for her father. We shared the gospel with him.

There was no response.

I confess, I came to the point where I felt like the prayers were bouncing off the ceiling.

He died somewhat because of the kind of life that he lived at the age of 57. When we were at the funeral in Edisto Island, SC, a woman came up to us and said to Mary, “Are you Ken Hatfield's daughter?” … She knew that Mary was a believer in Jesus.

She said, “I want you to know the story of what happened to your father in the last four months.” And she said, “My husband and I are also followers of Jesus. Your father and his fifth wife moved in next door. We knew your father had cancer. We began to take over soup and bread, and we would talk. … Three months ago, your father put his trust in Christ!"

Friends, I can't tell you the joy that we have — to know that one day we’re going to see Ken in Heaven. We know that the wonder of the gospel is not: do your good works outweigh your bad works?

It's simply that the gospel of Jesus Christ as Jesus says: if you believe in me that that you become adopted. If you receive Him, you become adopted, and you're called one of His children.

God was hearing our prayers. It was going to be his timetable.

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Andrew Schaeffer: A Story from West Africa

One of Jonathan’s brothers, Andrew Schaeffer, came to Chapel Pointe for Jonathan’s talk. As an international worker (missionary) who has served over 30 years in West Africa, Andrew has witnessed many times when the God who answered prayer in the Bible has also answered prayer today.

Andrew shared:

A year or two ago, one of our pastors in [West Africa] was taken by terrorists.

He was out in his fields farming. A group of them surrounded him, and they captured him. His son was there. His son was able to flee to safety, but he was not able to get away.

They tied his hands behind his back, put a piece of wood in between his arms. They tied his feet together, and they held him for three days. On the third night, he was surrounded by about 15 of these terrorists, and he began to pray. Others were praying for him as well. But that particular night, he recalled the story of Daniel in the lion's den, and he said, "Lord, as you delivered Daniel, you can deliver me."

He looked, and he saw that all 15 of the terrorists had fallen into a deep sleep. He began to move his arms a little bit behind his back. Suddenly he felt the cord loosen, and he was able to get his hands free, untie his feet, and slowly he crawled out of the area where those terrorists were. When he got far enough away, he stood up and he began walking in the dark of the night.

He eventually made his way to a village and that next day our church president [Joe] … was on his way from the capitol to the second largest city. They called him on his way, and they said, “This pastor has been found. He's released.”

Joe was able to stop in and see him. He said on his arms and his feet, you could still see lots of scars from the ropes that were around them, but he was giving thanks to God for his deliverance.

The God of Daniel is the God of today.

Sometimes we get discouraged, but He is hearing, and He is answering.

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Praying for the Impossible

Jonathan resumed:

Friends, we have an opportunity that maybe the familiarity of prayer causes us to forget the wonder and the privilege that is ours to go to the very God of the universe — the One who spoke and the worlds came into being.

He invites us to come.

We read in Hebrews that the curtain of the temple has been torn in two from top to bottom. We can boldly enter into the presence of our Father and know that we are heard.

I'm just going to share two more incidences of answered prayer. …

[When Andrew and I] were in college, we had a prayer group. There were about seven of us young men, and we asked the college: “If we fast for lunch every day this school year, could we contribute that money toward missions?”

They weren't really sure how that would impact the budget. They eventually came back and said yes. We decided we were going to direct our prayers to two countries where missionaries were not allowed. Those two countries were Mongolia and Albania.

That was in the mid-80s.

In Mongolia in the early 1990s, the doors opened for missionaries to come in!

What was then known as a country of maybe 30 believers, today has probably over 30,000 believers in Jesus, and Alliance missionaries are serving there. We were not the only ones praying, I'm sure. But God heard the prayers of his people.

The same is true in Albania, a self-declared atheist state. Today, there are people serving in Albania.

I remember back then saying, “Wow, we're praying for what seems to be the impossible.”

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Every Season Has a Ministry

So, back to the conversation with my mother.

I wonder about the Apostle Paul, if when he was imprisoned, he thought, “Lord, my ministry has shrunk. I'm so restricted in terms of what I can do.”

But the letters that we read today from the New Testament were written largely when Paul was where?

In prison, right?

And he said himself, “Day and night I pray for you.”

If you read in Philippians 1, he had a captive audience. Paul said that the entire palace guard heard the gospel because of [his] chains which served to advance the cause of the gospel.

So even when we maybe have the prison of Parkinson’s — or whatever it may be — God has a ministry.

As Ida said, the mission field may change.

It may be now one of encouragement, one of prayer. It could be one of sharing the gospel or being available for whatever purposes he has.

How powerful? To the extent that someone could pray, and for three and a half years it didn't rain; and then he prays again and the rains come.

What a great savior we have!