{Sue, in the blue dress, with others from the church planting team}
When I look back and remember the beginnings of Covenant Fellowship Church, what stands out most to me is the way the Lord was faithful to answer our prayers. An unusual grace for prayer marked Covenant Fellowship from the beginning.
Our needs in the first years of the church were great and basic. We needed a place to meet. We needed people to come to the meetings, and we needed at least some of them to return after their initial visit. We needed finances. We knew that in our own strength we could not successfully plant and grow this church. So, in desperation, we prayed. When God calls us to serve him in ways beyond our ability, we need to pray.
We knew that Isaiah 56:7 says, ”My house shall be called a house of prayer.” So we started women’s prayer “cells,” and the men met together for prayer as well. The Spirit was prompting us to “watch and pray” in response to Jesus’s words to his disciples in Matthew 26:40: “Could you not watch with me one hour?”
And the Lord began to answer our prayers. People trickled in on Sundays. Our personal and church finances were tight, but God was providing. I remember one month the church was financially strapped and facing something of a crisis. We beseeched the Lord to have mercy on us and provide, and the Lord was faithful to answer our cries. A woman came that Sunday with a sizable donation that kept us going.
We also fervently prayed from Psalm 90:
“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us, yes establish the work of our hands” (Psalm 90:17).
We thought often of Jesus’s parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18. She kept coming, again and again, to the judge for justice. And Luke tells us that Jesus “told them this parable that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18).
We also thought often of the persistent friend in Luke 11. “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ’Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within. ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I tell you though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Luke 11:5-13).
God was faithful in those early years to answer our prayers, and he continues to answer our prayers today. May we never tire of asking, seeking, and knocking.
