“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people,” ~ Luke 1:68.

Several weeks ago my marriage was under heavy attack from the enemy. I had a discouraging post nearly written and ready to go live when God turned my world upside down. But in an amazingly good way. And which shed some light on why the enemy was attacking.

My husband prayed to receive Jesus!

There’s no way to appropriately express in that short statement the gratitude and awe in my heart. I have been praying for this for 30 years. One by one our kids have surrendered their lives to Jesus, leaving Rick as the last holdout. My whole family is now secure in their eternal futures. 

I have a special fondness now for the encounter in John 3 between Jesus and Nicodemus. This story, these verses, played a monumental role in my husband’s salvation experience. And the story goes back quite a ways. For many years he proclaimed he was saved. He backed this up with the story of a Bible given to him when he responded to an invitation to accept Jesus as a child attending Vacation Bible School. He wasn’t sure where that Bible was but was certain he kept it all these years. (Wouldn’t it be fun if we were finally able to locate it now?? – this part is just for me, not included in the actual post.)

A pastor who preached at a church I attended for many years used to say of the people of his town that they “were all saved. We have to get them unsaved in order to save them.” By this he meant that they were like so many people who believe themselves to be Christians when there’s no evidence in their lives of a relationship with Jesus.

Several years ago, Rick and I took a two week road trip to California. Because there were so many miles to cover, we broke it up into several days. Many days we would set our alarm for 4:30 or 5:30 am to get on the road, leaving me no time to spend with God in prayer and in His word. On those occasions, I would do it on the road while Rick was driving.

One morning early on our way back home he asked if I had read my Bible yet. When I indicated I had not and reached for it in the bag at my feet, he asked if I would read it out loud. Um, yes! At that particular time I was following a plan that led me through specific portions of the Bible each day. The section for that morning was John 3. Jesus met with Nicodemus, a religious teacher of the Israelites. 

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” This was Jesus’s statement to Nicodemus, which confused him. He asked Jesus, “How can someone be born again when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

Interestingly enough, when I read Jesus’s statement, Rick asked the same thing.  The conversation we had that morning circled back around to that prayer Rick prayed as a child at Vacation Bible School. Eventually he asked me if I thought he was saved. 

“Based on what we’ve read, have you observed changes since you said that prayer as a child?” I asked him.

“No, I didn’t even really understand what I was saying,” was his response. 

“So, then, do you think you were saved that day?”

“No, I suppose not.” 

And there it is. We got him “unsaved”.

I watched and waited for something big to happen after that encounter on I-70, but to no avail. We went back home and life resumed as usual.

Three years later, my pastor met with another guy from church at a small cafe about a mile from our home. Little did he realize it was orchestrated by God to set in motion events that would bring us right back around to those verses in John 3. 

Pastor Paul asked the owner of the cafe if he could pray for him. Being preoccupied with multiple customers, the owner said no. But after Paul left, one of those customers at the counter said he wished Paul had asked him if he could pray for him. The owner reached out to let Paul know. Paul met with the counter guy, and after some discussion felt that God was opening a door for a new bible study. 

Pastor Paul contacted me to share what he thought God was doing and ask if I thought Rick might want to attend the study. I relayed the information to Rick, and he said that he would attend a bible study at the cafe. But only after hunting season was over. He had a month of turkey hunting on his schedule, and nothing was going to interrupt it. 

Since May, Rick has been faithfully attending that study. I learned from my son that Rick would sit each morning while I was at work and read through the Bible. Because there were a lot of words Rick didn’t understand, he kept a dictionary nearby. And when he had trouble understanding some of the verses, he asked if I had a bible commentary. Which, of course, I do. I know a lot of Christians who attend church weekly who don’t study their bible as diligently as Rick was studying. And God’s word does not come back to Him void. 

I joined the study, sitting alongside my husband, when my schedule at work shifted to part-time in August. This was also a dream of mine. We were on the last segment of the scripture reading list on November 14. The verses were from John 3. And the impossible finally happened. After nearly 30 years of prayer, I tearfully watched as my husband prayed for salvation. 

Let this be a reminder that God hears our prayers. If He can save my husband, He can save anybody!