God Honors Prayer

In other words, I never asked God, "What do you want of me in this situation?"

Each night I dutifully called the courthouse to see if I would have to serve the next day. Each night I was told that I didn’t have to report. The third night the message changed. The recording said, "Report for duty at 9 a.m. tomorrow."

When I arrived at the courthouse that morning, there were so many people in the room that I concluded that they would never call my name. To my surprise, however, I was called into the courtroom where the lawyers were selecting the jury. They carefully interviewed each person. Once again my hopes began to rise. They were excluding people left and right. In fact, just ahead of me, another pastor was interviewed and excluded. Surely they would exclude me. No such luck. I was selected.

At that point I realized that I had a pretty faithless attitude and had never submitted this situation to God. I prayed, "Lord, you want me on this jury for some purpose; help me to fulfill that purpose."

Here was the gist of the case: a young woman was accused of stealing a welfare card from the purse of a fellow worker at her restaurant and using the card to buy several hundred dollars worth of groceries at a nearby store. The defense contended that the accused had no license and did not drive. How could she possibly have gotten to the store, which was several blocks away, purchased all these groceries and returned quickly enough not to be noticed? The prosecutor contended that there was a video tape of her purchasing the groceries and the clerk who served her was willing to testify against her. I figured I would be out of there in no time.

As they say, things are not always what they seem. The quality of the video tape was so poor that they weren’t able to identify the accused. The testimony of the clerk seemed unreliable. That was day one.

On day two I arrived at the courthouse late in the morning. This meant that there was limited room in the parking garage. I kept circling until I found myself on the lowest level. Then who should drive into the space beside me? The defendant: the person who supposedly didn’t drive and didn’t have a car. I was flabbergasted. We got out of our cars at the same time. She recognized me but apparently didn’t imagine that this would have an impact on the trial. She greeted me and offered to show me the way to the elevator. I declined and went directly to the judge who immediately released me from the jury.

Moments later the prosecutor talked to me and told me that I was going to be a prosecution witness. So I waited in the hallway to testify. As I sat there, I saw the young woman who had filed the charges coming out, raising her hands in the air and joyously jumping up and down. The defendant had admitted her guilt. The case was over.

Afterwards the prosecutor told me that without my testimony the defendant would have gotten off. Even worse, the plaintiff, a single mom, would have lost her job for filing false charges.

I was confirmed in a long-standing conviction that day: we need to submit every situation in our lives to God. Though I was slow to submit, God nevertheless honored my prayer.