Sam Pollard, a twenty-four year old missionary in China, was planning to have a 10-day meeting. He preceded this meeting with seven days of prayer and then a day of fasting and a night of prayer. At the end of that time, God promised Him thousands of souls. He wrote to a friend, “People may say I’m foolish, but I’ll have my thousands.

A Christian leader was very sick and not expected to live. Alone with the Lord, He cried, “What should I do, Lord?”

Ben Patterson, a campus pastor, speaks in Deepening Your Conversation With God of his habit of rising early to be in solitude. He says that in all honesty, he gets up not to achieve an elite level of spiritual athleticism; he gets up because it is so good and pleasant to do so. He can hardly call it a discipline anymore. "It is so delicious, so ineffably sweet to hear the Lord, the Good Shepherd speak, or even to hope that he might," he says. It isn't so much that God speaks directly during those times; rather, the stillness prepares Patterson to be alert to those whispers and nudges he might receive as he drives his car or walks across campus.

The psalmist tells us to "sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant" (135:3). Sometimes it pleases God for us to sing our praises to Him. In 1750, Samuel Fairclough wrote this about God's response to our praises: "...his soul is ravished with the thoughts and contemplation of them." He takes infinite delight in our praises rather we speak or sing them.

The Francis Schaeffer family was looking for a home to rent, and Edith had discovered a chalet that would perfectly meet their needs. It was for sale, though, not for rent. For an hour she fervently prayed for God’s intervention while seeking to know she sincerely wanted God’s will.

Arthur and Wilda Matthews were missionaries in China when the country was overtaken by Communism. Other missionaries were allowed to leave, but they and their small daughter were left alone with barely enough money to survive. Their clothes grew ragged, and their food supply became so poor that even the Chinese felt pity.

One Saturday Rosalind sat in the Toronto Mission Union waiting to play the organ. A few days earlier she had met a rather shabbily dressed young man named Jonathan Goforth. Just as the meeting was about to begin, Jonathan Goforth was called out of the room. He had been sitting across the corner from her with several people between. When he rose, he placed his Bible on the chair.

Jeff Cavins* went to the dermatologist for a routine checkup, and the doctor noticed a mole he thought should be removed. Jeff wasn’t too concerned because he had had other moles removed before. But on the day the doctor called to tell him it was melanoma, Jeff had a choice of how to react to the news.