“Great is thy faithfulness,” O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.Gradually, like the wind blowing through a field of wheat, one
and two and ten and twenty at a time, forty thousand men began to
rise to their feet. They began to lift their hearts and hands and voices
in prayer and praise. And it became clear that not only did these
men know the song, they knew the one to whom they were singing.
And they worshiped him for his steady grace in their lives.
Spike said that all around him he was aware that each man had
an inner and invisible story of God’s faithfulness. Though he couldn’t
see or hear those testimonies, he could feel them in the invisible
heartbeat of that prayer-filled moment. Each man represented a life
that God had touched and changed and rescued.
Spike thought of God’s faithfulness in our own desperate moment
of need. He said that he could see in his mind’s eye the day we
brought our eighteen-year-old son to enroll him in a drug treatment
center. Our sense of powerlessness and failure had been palpable.
But then Spike said he turned his head slightly to see that same
son worshiping beside him, now clean and sober for twelve years,
now a Christian, a husband, a father, a friend, and Spike was over-
whelmed with a gratitude that literally took the song from his throat
and sent tears coursing down his cheeks. He could only praise God.
Father, you are unchanging. There is no shadow of turning in you.
Teach us to depend on you, to breathe in the oxygen of your good-
ness. We love you, Lord.101 MOST POWERFUL PRAYERS IN THE BI BLE 81