Prayer that Moves Heaven – Mother’s Day Special

This is Anne Graham Lotz. What if this Mother's Day, every mother in America made a commitment to daily pray for their children? What if every grandmother in America made a commitment to pray for her grandchildren? And what if when we prayed for our children and grandchildren, we didn't just pray, now I lay me down to sleep kind of prayers.

But we prayed the Daniel Prayer, a prayer that moves heaven and changes nations. Welcome to Living in the Light with Bible teacher Anne Graham Lotz. For today's special edition, joining Anne is her youngest daughter, Rachel Ruth Wright. The two share memories of a faithful praying mother and grandmother, Ruth Bell Graham, and encourage all mothers and grandmothers to be women of the Word and women of prayer.

Being a mother is one of the hardest, most challenging, most rewarding, most discouraging, most thrilling, most depressing, most joy-filled, one of the most challenging positions you can hold. And being a mother more than any other thing has taught me that I need God. And I think it's put me on my knees more often than any other particular thing in my life. I'm so thankful that God placed me in a family where I had a godly heritage, and Psalm 16, 6, David said that, My lines have fallen in pleasant places, lo, I have a goodly heritage. And as I look back into my heritage, I had grandparents who knew how to pray and who prayed for their children and grandchildren. I had a mother and father who prayed for their children and their grandchildren. So I actually know that my life today is an answer to my mother's prayers, my grandmother's prayers, and the prayers of those who've gone before me.

Anne Graham Lotz as she reflects on her mother, Ruth Bell Graham. One of my earliest memories was of my mother on her knees in prayer in the house that we lived in, which we now call my father's house in Montreat, North Carolina. My bedroom was on the second floor over the bedroom of my mother's bedroom, which was on the first floor. So it didn't matter what time I got up in the morning, if I got up very early in order to study for a test for school, I would look out my window and I could see the lights from my mother's room reflected on the trees outside my window, and I knew she was on her knees in prayer. And at night when I went to bed, it didn't matter what time I went to bed, if I slipped downstairs and wanted to talk to mother, you know, just to say goodnight or something, I would find her on her knees in prayer, and when I did, I knew not to stick around because she would not disturb her prayer time.

She stayed on her knees until she finished, and it could be a couple of hours. And I knew firsthand that my mother was a woman of prayer. I never saw my mother lose her temper.

Isn't that amazing? With five children, one of which was Franklin, who would give anybody fits, but my mother never lost her temper. She had patience, she had joy, she had strength, and I know it came from her relationship with God that she developed through daily prayer and Bible reading. And I know I'm an answer to her prayers. One of her verses that she put inside a bracelet that my daddy had made for her, on the inside was a Bible verse that was Psalm 119.90, that God is faithful to every generation. And she claimed God's faithfulness not only to her generation, she had seen it in the generation before her, and she claimed it for my generation, and even for my grandchildren. And so I have the joy of knowing that my mother was someone who prayed daily for me, and she prayed daily for my children. God was gracious and gave me three children, and the youngest of which is Rachel Ruth, and she's joining me in this conversation on Mother's Day. I'm just so glad to welcome her into this conversation. I want to tell you something about her before I pull her in. Rachel Ruth was my third child. She has three daughters herself.

They're involved in every kind of sport. They play soccer, they play tennis, they're on the track team, they play basketball, and she herself is a JV tennis coach. Once a month she's responsible for the missions chapel in her school. Twice a day, on that day when she has chapel, she does two services. She has three to four hundred children in each service, igniting the hearts of these little children to want to serve the Lord, to be missionaries in the world that's right between their own two feet. And it's thrilling to see the little lives changing as she brings them to the cross, and they put their faith in Jesus, and then they have that deep desire to go out and serve Him.

So she does that, then she teaches a Bible study in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which is the home of the University of North Carolina, and Rachel Ruth teaches them every week from God's Word. But she also is the chairman of my prayer team, so I'm just so thankful to welcome her into this conversation and say that it's a joy for me to have her, and it's by God's grace that I have a daughter who's as precious as this and as godly that God is using in such a wonderful way. Rachel Ruth, welcome to this conversation, and I'd like to know how you view prayer as a mother. What prayer means to you? Well, that is extremely humbling just to hear you describe what I've been living out, and I can tell you right now the thing that comes to my mind is it's because of the heritage that I've been given, and if I didn't see my grandmother live out the life that she lived or see you live out the life that you lived, I don't think I would be doing what I'm doing today.

And I see a genuine love for Jesus in your life. I saw it in Tete's life, and I think that's the difference maker when a parent or a grandparent is actually really living out what they're saying and what the Bible says. My children called my mother Tete because that was mother's name for herself.

It's Chinese for old lady, but it's a respectful term. Rachel Ruth Wright remembers her grandmother Tete and the influence she had on her prayer life. I remember many stories of her praying, but prayer is a huge part of my life, and I feel like from difficulties that I've gone through and hard things that I've been through, it's drawn me to pray because you become so desperate that you get on your knees, whether it was in ninth grade, and just telling the Lord, I can't do this. I want to be a strong Christian, not a wimpy Christian, and then to see the Lord kind of bring hardship in my life to make me stronger, but it developed a prayer life in my life because things were so hard, and so many times when you're desperate and when you're going through struggles, you do cry out to the Lord, and so I think He brings those into your life to do that, but it's taught me to pray and pray and pray, and so it's something that I've wanted to pass on to my girls, and one thing that I think the Lord has done with me because I have such a big imagination, and I think I can kind of picture things and see things, and so I feel like the Lord will bring somebody's face to my mind or somebody's name to my mind, and I'll begin to pray for that person, and I know that God, the Holy Spirit, has placed that person in my mind, and I've tried to be very faithful to pray every single time somebody comes in my mind. The Holy Spirit can put those thoughts into your mind to just be faithful to pray. I pray because Jesus becomes your best friend, and you just want to talk to Him, you want to tell Him what's going on, tell Him why you're sad today or why you're discouraged or why you're joyful.

I think it's so special. You've pinpointed a couple of very basic lessons, but sometimes lessons that people miss. One is that prayer should be Spirit-led, and I think we can get on our knees and go through our shopping list. We can ask Him for anything we want, and He loves for us to come and bring our requests, but He has things He wants to put on our hearts to pray for, and that's the Daniel prayer. The Daniel prayer was Daniel taking what was on God's heart, the release of His people from captivity, and praying that back to God. So the fact that you're so sensitive, and I've seen that in you, you're much more faithful to pray for things like that than I've been, and it's been very convicting because I see you when God brings somebody to your mind, you're so faithful to right then pray for the person, and it's exciting to me when we get to heaven to find out what God did in response to your prayers. I know heaven was moved. I know God was responding because He put that on your heart to pray.

So I think that's one thing you pointed out. The other thing that is something we sometimes miss, that one of the blessings of prayer is to develop that personal relationship with the Lord. It's not just to get things from Him. It's not just to tick off the fact that today we prayed and we worshiped and we interceded and we confessed. It's while we're talking to Him, while we're praying, led by His Spirit, that we develop that close, personal, intimate relationship that you and I know. You know, as we reflect back on this past year, my husband, he moved to heaven. It was very sudden.

It was unexpected in many, many ways. The thing that carried me through, and the thing that I think carried all of us through actually, was our personal relationship with the Lord. If I waited until something like that happened, to then suddenly turn to God and try to develop a relationship and handle all that shock and horror and grief at the same time, I would have gone under.

I know. And so my relationship with God is stronger today than I think it was before my husband moved because of what you also referred to, the desperation. You know, you're so aware that you need God. And that also is the Daniel prayer, because Daniel was desperate. He knew if God didn't answer his prayer to release His people from captivity, they wouldn't be released. That kind of desperation can bear enormous fruit when it's based on a personal relationship with God that you've been developing and been enjoying for quite some time.

You don't wait until the crisis hits before you call on Him. So it's interesting that sometimes those desperate situations create in us. In fact, it was in our devotional reading this morning that deep down in the earth there is fire, and that produces the coal, and the coal produces the diamonds. And it's the same thing true in our lives, the deep pain, the grief, the fire that sometimes enters deep down in our souls can create that which becomes very precious in God's sight and something beautiful for others to behold. Can you share that story about Teta? Well, it was so sweet because I remember we were actually doing some more planning for the wedding, and we had gone up to stay at her house, and I remember being in tears and crying a little bit. And Teta came down the hall, and she knew that because we had talked earlier about it, and just a little worried, a little nervous about getting married. And Teta walks into the room, and she comes over, and she just puts something in my lap, and I look at it, and she had written out one of her poems, and it was about marriage.

And she handed it to me, and she said, I wanted to give this to you. And then she prayed with me, and she talked with me about how we just need to trust the Lord in every situation that our husbands don't become God to us, but we need to rely on God to help us with our husbands. And she did such a good job of that. She was such a beautiful example. She just dove into her family, loved her Bible, loved studying the Word, was always in prayer. In fact, at the end of her life, when she couldn't move around that much, I'll never forget, she said, Ray Truth, she said, I'm like a mouse on a glue board. And she had many, literally, mice on glue boards around her house.

And so I got the picture in my mind, but she said she was a mouse on a glue board because she couldn't move. She couldn't get out of her chair unless somebody helped her, or she was in bed, and she would just lay there and pray. And she said that's what she knew God was calling her to do at the end of her life. And so she prayed for each of us, and would take specific prayer requests, and she was such a godly example. And I remember sitting there on weekends when she had gotten out of the hospital, or when she was still confined in her chair, and I would just sit there for hours with the fire going, and we would discuss the Scriptures, and we would pray together. Just so full of life when she was in so much pain, and what an example that was to me. And I love the fact that to be godly, deeply spiritual, have a strong prayer life, to know the word backwards and forwards, does not mean you have to be pious.

You don't have to be long-faced, or sour, or you know, like you're holier than thou. She had such a crazy sense of humor, she was so much fun, and I think that's what made her so attractive, because her eyes sparkled, even towards the end, as you know, when we would go in her room, she immediately threw out her arms to us, her eyes were dancing, she would give a big smile, and she would say, hello, how are you darling, and then she would welcome us into her room, and want to know what we'd been doing, and even towards the last, when she couldn't even roll over in bed, she still had that joy, and that sparkle, and that response to us. And I know that all of that was flowing from her personal, intimate love relationship with Jesus. I was thinking the same thing, because you can't be in the kind of pain that she was in. In fact, there was one night when my sister and I had to leave the next morning early, and we said, Teta, we're going to have to go, and she told us to make sure that we woke her up in the morning, before we left, so she could say goodbye, and so, sure enough, the next morning, we walked down the stairs, and we knocked on our door, roll lightly, because we didn't want to wake her up, and we peeked in, and we walked in, and we said, Teta, and she rolled over, and she just immediately, from a sound sleep, woke up with her eyes bright, she put her hands together with this huge smile, and she said, you did it, you woke me up, and she gave us a big hug, but that will never leave my mind, her face, her expression, when she woke up from a sound sleep to be that joyful in the morning, when I know she was in so much pain.

What a testimony for me, going through different things to make sure that we always maintain that joy, and it comes from studying the Bible, that's what joy is, it's something you can't explain to anybody, because the Lord just gives you joy despite your circumstances, and I've seen him do that with me time and time again, and it's also something that flows onto my kids, and I can teach my kids when they're watching, and they know what's going on a little bit, and they can see that joy, then they learn to also reflect that as well. You know, that's such a good point. Mother would say she had these little quips, you know, and she would say that you can't teach your children to enjoy eating spinach if every time they see you eating yours, you gag, and so that we teach our children things by our example much more effectively than what we tell them. So they're watching us, so if we tell them and we back up with what we say, with what we do, then that's effective, but if you tell them one thing, do another thing, then they throw it out.

So it's that emphasis on Godly influence. It's so important for us to not keep what we've learned to ourselves. We've got to pass it on and be excited about God's Word and share it with our kids, because they really are reflections of us, and we have to be that example, and we need to show them how thrilling it is to walk with Jesus daily. And that is what I see in my mom, and I saw in Tete, and it's something I will never ever let myself lose, that I want to continue that fire so that my kids and my grandkids would see that fire in my eyes. One of the things that the Daniel prayer teaches, and I'm glad that I knew about it maybe before I even studied the Daniel prayer, but Daniel was reading his Bible, and he was reading the book of Jeremiah, and he came across a promise from God that after 70 years God would bring the people back from captivity, and it was that promise then that he prayed back to God.

I think it's important as mothers and grandmothers that we search God's Word for a promise that we can pray back to Him for our children. And one was in Exodus chapter 15, and it was after the children of Israel had been delivered from Egypt. And if you remember, when they left Egypt, Pharaoh's army pursued them, and they found themselves with the mountains on one side, the desert on the other, the Red Sea in front of them, and here comes Pharaoh's army. God miraculously opened up the Red Sea.

The children of Israel crossed on dry land. When Pharaoh's army pursued, God collapsed the waters and destroyed the enemy. And so I felt like what God was saying, if there was any horse and rider, any enemy that would pursue you, that would keep you from the place of God's blessing, that God would overthrow that person. And so if we'll just trust the Lord, He'll take us through. We can look back and see that the very things we thought were a hindrance to you all being in the place of blessing actually are used by Him to usher you into that place of blessing because of the desperation aspect.

You can be facing cancer, but it makes you desperate, and you press through, and you come out with a stronger relationship with the Lord. So that promise, I've prayed back to the Lord, Lord, you promised, you know, hold Him to His word. You said that if there is somebody that's going to hinder my children from being in the place of your blessing for their lives, then would you overthrow them?

And so I just trust Him to keep His word. And then the other promise that He's given me is in Isaiah 44, in verse 3, He says, I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. I will pour out my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. And so I have prayed as I've watched each one of my children go through really hard things, things that are difficult for a mother to watch them go through because, of course, as a mother, I want them to be healthy, wealthy, happy, and problem-free. But God is a better parent than me, so He knows it takes hard things sometimes to make them into the people that would be filled with His glory and receive the fullness of His blessing. But I've prayed to Him and just said, Lord, you've promised that you'd pour out your spirit on my offspring or my children.

So would you pour out your spirit on them? And you've promised that you would bless my descendants. And I think that goes down to my grandchildren, to Belle and Sophia and Regan, that He would pour out His spirit on you and the girls and that He would bless the descendants that even would come after that. So one of the things I think that makes prayer powerful is not just when we tell God what we want and what we would like, but we actually take what He has said in His Word and we claim it and we pray it back to Him. Our God is a God who hears prayer. In fact, I remember this wonderful man who was a mentor to Joel Rosenberg saying that our God is a prayer-hearing, a prayer-answering, a miracle-working, a covenant-keeping God.

So that when we pray to God, we're praying to someone who bends down his ear, who listens to what we have to say, who moves heaven and earth in order to respond. And that's the Daniel prayer. Daniel was a man of God who poured out his heart. He took God's Word. And the neat thing, Rachel Ruth, when Daniel prayed the prayer in Daniel chapter 9, he was in his 80s.

That's the same age that Tete was when she moved our Father's house. And it doesn't matter what age, what generation, but he was a man reading his Bible, getting something fresh from it, and he prayed it back to God. And God answered his prayer, not only to give him the wisdom and the insight that he needed for some of the things that God had already said to him, but three years later God set his people free, moved the heart of Cyrus to release the people from captivity in direct response to Daniel's prayer as he claimed God's Word and prayed it back to God. By the way, you have to take God's Word into your prayer time, you know, and just open up God's Word and pray his Word, claim the Scriptures, and then pray his Word back to him and just see what God will do. I'll get up in the morning and I'm praying for my girls or praying for my mom or praying for different situations and I pray all through it and then that's when I open up my Bible after that or I open up my devotions, my daily light, whatever it might be, and I'll read through and see God so many times immediately answer what I just prayed for.

It happened to me last week and it happened to me yesterday in the morning and it's so thrilling because you just get that sense of him being right there and speaking to you. I think one of the things that happens when you start to spend time with the Lord, you want to spend more time with the Lord. And that was actually in the devotional reading this morning, In the Daily Light, which is a little volume that my grandmother gave my mother when she was 10 years old and mother gave me when I was 10 years old. I gave each of you when you were 10 years old. Now we're passing it down to your girls. When they were 10, they received their daily lights and so I take the daily light into my prayer time and it's just a little volume, a compilation of Scriptures, and that legacy is being passed from generation to generation.

It's not by accident. You know, it's been a very intentional passing of that baton of truth to the generations and I've seen my grandparents pass it to my parents and my parents pass it to me and I try to pass it to you and you're passing it to your girls so that that baton of truth is passed with the fire that is picked up by the next generation. I just want to thank you for sharing this conversation and praise God that we serve one who is living, who is faithful, who is true, who bends down out of heaven to hear what we have to say and who responds to our prayers and that when we pray, heaven is moved and nations and families can be changed as a result. As we wrap up this conversation, what comes to my mind is that maybe there's somebody listening who is a single parent.

My father traveled 60% of our growing up years and my mother was pretty much a single parent. I would pray that my life would be an encouragement to you that you could see as a single mother who develops your own relationship with Jesus through prayer and Bible reading and your faith is vibrant and passionate and you have the fire of God in your heart and you seek to pass it to your children that you can do it. You know, I think it's wonderful to have two parents in the home who do that but you can do that with God's help. And the other thing that comes to my mind is maybe there's somebody who's listening who doesn't have a godly heritage but you can start a godly heritage. There are many examples in scripture of people who came to Christ and they started that godly heritage and there are many testimonies today of people who began a godly heritage. The important thing is that you choose to begin.

It doesn't matter what age your children are, whether you have children or not or grandchildren or not, whether your children are small or whether they're teenagers or whether they're adults themselves. Whatever age, the important thing is right now for you to establish and develop that personal, permanent, intimate relationship with God that he offers through faith in Jesus. And you establish it at the cross. You come to the cross by faith and you tell God you're sorry for your sins. You just confess that you're a sinner and that you want him to forgive you. You believe Jesus died on the cross to take away your sin. You ask Jesus to be your Savior, ask God to forgive you and cleanse you with the blood of Jesus and open up your heart, invite him into your life as your Lord and Savior, believing that he rose from the dead to give you eternal life because it's that relationship that will carry you through when life throws you a curveball. God will never forsake you, he will never leave you, he will always be there for you and heaven will be moved when you pray.

He's your Father, he loves you, you're his child. So you can come to him, crawl up in his lap by faith, put your head on his shoulder and just pour out your heart to him. So if you would allow me the privilege, let me just pray for you for a moment. Heavenly Father, Abba, we come to you now as your children, your daughters, and we thank you and praise you that you are our Father and you understand the heavy responsibility of being a parent, especially parenting children in a wicked, willful world. So we come to you knowing that you understand our needs and you understand our hearts cry and you understand our deep desire to pass truth and faith in you to the next generation. So I pray, Lord, that each one listening would make the time to seek you with all of their heart, mind, soul and strength to make the time to develop that personal, permanent, intimate relationship with you and that as they spend time with you, you would become the joy of their hearts, that they would sense increasingly that when they speak to you, heaven is moved and their family, one by one by one, will be changed. So we ask this please in Jesus' name and for his glory. Amen. Thank you for joining us for this Mother's Day edition of Living in the Light with Anne Graham Lotz from the Daniel Prayer, Prayer that Moves Heaven.