All useful Christians must be enrolled in the school of prayer. Therefore, looking back over those long, tearing months in the South Pacific during World War II, I see with gratitude that God was bringing me into a new relationship with him through prayer. The ceaseless struggle to witness to all my rowdy friends on board (where I never knew of another professing Christian or saw another Bible), coupled with each long night standing watch on the flying bridge, taught me much about prolonged prayer. Nights under the stars as the ship rose and plunged under the swells, God met with me in prayer. Sometimes it was anguished prayer. My teenager’s world was blasting apart, but as I looked into the beautiful night skies of the South Pacific, God drew near and spoke in his language to my heart. At times, I was so transported that I wished to be nowhere else than there with him. At these times, the war and my homesickness became incidental.
A climatic moment in my entire South Pacific experience began one evening seated on the fantail of the ship reading with misty eyes a stack of sixty-five letters that I had just received from home. They had finally caught up to our ship after many weeks of no mail. With choking emotion there at anchor just off one of the Solomon Islands, I made three definite requests to Jesus Christ:
- That I might somehow be spared to see my parents again. (I had not seen them since the bus whisked me away for boot camp.)
- That I could be transferred some place where I might have instructions on how to preach God’s Word in daily witness to other sailors and how to answer their ceaseless challenges. (Often as many as six or eight would gather at a time around me, plying me with questions and taunting, “How can you have any fun when you go into town?”—meaning sex and drinking mostly.)
- That I might receive further technical training in caring for the complicated sonar equipment. (Often it would malfunction or break down in submarine-infested waters, and the responsibility weighed heavily on me to discover and fix the problems, which put my entire ship in jeopardy, as well as any vessels we might be screening from submarine attack.)
The very next morning after this crisis time in prayer, I remember consciously saying inwardly, “I believe this is the day of answer to all my prayer!” Humanly speaking, this was utterly unthinkable. As we all knew, our future offered exactly two options: our ship would be shot up and maybe sunk, or else we would serve out the war fighting in the South Pacific.
Here is what happened later that very day: I received a summons by loudspeaker to go directly to the sonar officer’s stateroom. Though I frequently got such calls, this time my heart was pounding so hard that I paused a moment before knocking. The officer sat at his desk with a serious expression, and there before him was a letter. It seemed to me that I knew exactly the news it would contain—but it was utterly impossible! How could one man on a ship in the middle of the Pacific ever receive an order to be transported off that ship? And how could such an order ever be carried out?
As to the first “impossibility,” a seaplane had landed in the water near our ship and signaled to us that they had an official order for the captain. Our small boat brought the letter, which ended up there on the sonar officer’s desk. It was nothing less than an order for the transfer of one man back to Chicago for advanced training in radar and sonar. The captain had selected me to be that man, and I was ordered to pack immediately. All my shipmates lined the starboard deck to see me ferried off to the nearest island, from which I was to make my way back home as best I could. It turned out to be a harrowing experience, but God got me through it.
So it was that all three of my urgent requests were fully granted. I got home again to see my parents, and for months in Chicago I reveled in the fellowship and instruction at Moody Church, even as I was getting the best of advanced training in radar and sonar. Sadly, my ship suffered heavy casualties from several direct hits in combat at this time.
Perhaps there are two special reasons for thrilling experiences in prayer early in a Christian’s life. First, God is merciful in his dealings with those who are beginners. Second, beginners are often simple in their faith; they simply believe God.
The above is taken from my book, “Bright Light”. To read more stories of how God in answer to prayer, “Bright Light” is available to order HERE…