A man of prayer
June 10, 2008 (Tuesday)
Readers Digest used to have a regular offering called “My most unforgettable character.” I would find it difficult to write an article under that title, because there have been so many unforgettable people that the Lord has brought into my life, and Josef Herschkowitz will forever be one of them.
Arrested only because he was a Jew, he was taken from his home in Vienna and placed in a concentration camp at Dachau, while his wife, a Gentile, tried everything she knew to do to obtain his release. The year was 1939, and Jews were still being allowed to leave the country if they could meet certain conditions. She got him out, through the efforts of a Christian organization known at the time as “The American Board of Missions to the Jews, Inc.” He made it to the United States, where he came to know Christ, and began preaching the gospel.
In his personal testimony, he always told the congregation that he had been an atheist, and on the day his father died, he was walking on a Vienna street, as he passed the open door of a church. He paused and looked inside, where he could see people praying. He fell against the doorway, and wept his heart out, because he realized he had no one to whom he could pray. Years later, after his conversion and life of Christian service, I knew him as a man of prayer. To hear him pray was to enter the presence of a Holy God.
How about you? Do you know the Lord? When you have critical needs or crises in your life, do you go to the Lord in prayer? I hope you do. I hope He hears you. But why have a “hope so” faith, when you can have a “know so” one? If you accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God, his death on the cross as being accomplished in your behalf, and his resurrection from the dead as proof of His power, then when you pray in His name there is absolutely no doubt that God hears you. Will you accept Jesus as your Savior and Lord? Today?