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By Rev. John Kofi Futagbi,
A test showing how God answers prayer came to me one day while traveling from Ghana to Nigeria. The flight I was taking was scheduled to leave Accra at 7:00 A.M. At 5:30 A.M., I hailed a passing taxi and was on my way to the airport. About five miles from the airport, the taxi stalled. The driver asked me to help him push the car. When another taxi pulled up, my driver said, “Why don’t you go with him so you don’t miss your flight?”
I was traveling with two bags. I had placed my large bag in the back seat. My small bag containing my passport, tickets, money, bank book and other documents I was holding in the front seat. When I got out to push the car, I left the bag on the seat. In the rush to catch the other taxi, I grabbed my large case and we took off. I did not realize until we were near the airport that I had forgotten my small bag.
I asked the driver to go back to see if the taxi was still there. He drove quickly, but apparently the car had started and left. We drove around the place but did not see anybody. It was very early in the morning when I took the first taxi, so I did not notice the license number. Also, I was quite sure I would not recognize the car or driver again.
Because other passengers needed to catch their flights, I suggested we return to the airport. I met some of my friends at the airport and told them what had happened. Some of them suggested that I go to the broadcasting house to have an annoucement made. I wondered what I should do. If I went, I would miss my flight. If the driver did not have a radio, he would not hear it anyway. So I told my friends I would just trust the Lord to work it out.
I went down to the airport taxi stand and prayed, “Lord, I don’t know where that bag is. Wherever that driver is, please show him the bag and ask him to bring it here. Amen.”
Only 10 minutes remained before my flight was to leave and still no sign of the driver. Just then one of my friends came down to tell me the flight was postponed until 8:00 A.M. At 7:45 A.M., a taxi pulled up and the driver stretched his neck to look closely at me. He parked the car and walked over to me, recognizing me by the suit I was wearing. He said, “Were you the one I picked up at 5:30 A.M.?
“Yes, I am! I’m the one!” I jumped up and took the bag from him. In gratitude, I gave him all the Ghanaian money I had. The driver said he had not noticed that I had forgotten my small bag, but passenger after passenger left and the bag was still there. He looked into the bag and saw the passport, ticket and all the other documents. Then an inner voice said to him that it probably belonged to the first passenger of the day, so he decided to come to trace me. We said goodbye and I ran joyfully to join my friends already in the check-in line.
On the flight I was recounting the goodness of the Lord to lead, guide and answer prayer. He led me to remain at the airport and to go down to the taxi stand . He allowed the driver to recognize me. When we pray, we need to keep steadfast and not waver. We must learn to just take God at His Word.
Another test, a fiery one, came to me while I was pastoring in my hometown. It came through the traditional authorities who are idol worshippers. They passed an edict that there was to be no drum beating at a certain time of the year. They wanted the Christian community to comply with it.
We Christians from thirteen denominations met to organize ourselves as The Local Council Of Churches. The Council decided that obeying the edict would mean bowing down to the idols. We declared we would not do so.
In response, the traditionalists mobilized ruffians and thugs and gave them alcoholic drink. They attacked us on a Sunday morning while we were still in our services. They threw stones, broke windows, beat people and, in another area, burned down two chapels. We did not imagine such a thing happening in the 20th century.
We wrote to the civil authorities, but since not much came from them, we decided to pray to the Lord to fight this battle for us. One of the elders overheard a conspiracy. The traditional authorities planned to eliminate me, the chairman of the Council. Their view was that I, a native of the town, would undermine the authority of the gods.
The second attack against us was in the spiritual realm and was directed at my wife. One Sunday evening after church service, we had dinner and watched a little television. Then my wife went to bed while I did some school work. When I went to bed about midnight, my wife woke up and started screaming with an exploding headache. I gave her some water and turned on the fan for cool air, but nothing helped. She slumped to the floor and when I raised her head, I saw that her eyes had rolled to the back of her head and her jaws were locked. I checked her pulse and there seemed to be none. I thought my world was coming to an end.
I held my wife’s jaw and prayed. In about 15 minutes she sneezed and a lump of phlegm jumped from her throat. She started breathing and revived a little. I prayed all night.
What the traditional authorities did was to choke my wife spiritually using their evil powers, and that materialized physically in her body. If the Lord had not intervened and answered prayer, they would have said, “It is because John refused to obey the edict of the gods that they killed his wife.” But the Lord is mightier than the powers of evil! By the following day, my wife was restored physically except for her vision. Initially she couldn’t see, then had triple vision. Eventually her vision was normal, except for one eye that remained twisted to the left.
Hospital tests revealed no brain tumor.We realized that this, too, was a spiritual attack. We kept praying fervently and after about three months, the eye was in its right place! Praise the Lord, He fulfilled James 5:16 which says, ...Pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
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