Dog Delivers Roast for Dinner: An Answered Prayer

My grandmother, Sylvia, was extremely practical. And so were her prayers. When I say prayer, I don’t mean religious prayer, but Bible-based, Spirit-led prayer. When she wasn’t praying scriptures, she was praying in tongues. Grandma Sylvia believed the first step to getting prayers answered was to get into God’s presence and seek the face of Jesus. She would tell me to have the scriptures I was standing on ready, so when I got into that place with God, then I could pray them.This is where a lot of Christians are missing it. Praying the Bible is vital, but so often they don’t, and then they wonder  why their prayers aren’t answered. When they go into prayer, they talk the problem and not the answer. The Word is our answer!My grandmother didn’t pray for things she couldn’t back up with God’s Word. At the same time, if she could find it in the Bible, she could believe for it, and her prayers would come to pass in the most amazing ways.

Dog Delivers Roast for Dinner

Sylvia believed God would always supply every need and she often stood on Philippians 4:19, “My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” One time in her younger years, she went into prayer and said, “Lord, I need some food for my family.” This prayer set off an unusual chain of events. That day, unbeknownst to my grandmother, a woman down the road decided to clean out her freezer. She laid some frozen meat on her front porch and then went back into her house. A dog went by the porch, saw a roast, grabbed it in his mouth and ran off. But instead of eating it, the dog delivered it.

That dog took it straight to my grandmother’s back porch and laid it down for dinner.

There wasn’t even a tear in the packaging. When my  grandmother opened the back door, there was the roast! She went shouting and dancing and saying, “Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus!” all over the house because dinner had arrived.

Practical Prayers

There were also many practical prayers she prayed for her family. In addition to praying for my grandfather’s salvation, she had to continually pray about his jobs. He would always quit and, through the years, had many different jobs. However, my grandmother stood on Matthew 21:22, “and all things, what- soever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive,” and prayed that my grandfather would stay at a job until he retired.She prayed and prayed, and he finally got a job at the railroad. Even though he threatened to quit, he actually liked the job and kept the job until he retired.My grandfather also had a bit of a temper and my grandmother was a little frightened of him when he would get mad  at her or the children, so she would back off and start praying in the Spirit. And when the boys had done something Grandpa didn’t like, and he would give them a whipping, my grandmother would pray the scripture Psalms 30:5: “For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” God always took care of her and her children.

Praying for Properties

My grandmother also had amazing results when she was praying for properties. She walked many properties for people and prayed, and whoever she prayed for got their land. She based those prayers on scriptures in the book of Joshua (1:3, 6:2–5).One time the church we belonged had split. A pastor who did not want the Holy Spirit to move had come into our Assembly of God church, so a group from the church found some property they felt would work for a new building. But when the land owner met Paul Hinton, the church member who was going to buy the land, the owner asked “Who is the property for?”Brother Paul said, “It’s for us to build a church on.”The owner said, “Then it’s not for sale. And if it was for sale, I would not sell it to you because I do not want a church here.”So Brother Paul and his wife Opal, my grandmother, myself and several others all went to the property. My grandmother said, “Now we are going to march around this property seven times, and on the last time we are going to shout, “This is our property!” So we marched around seven times and on the seventh time around, we all started shouting,  “This property is ours!” and we started dancing and thanking the Lord for our property.Then Sister Opal said, “Okay, what are we going to name the church?”We decided on Step of Faith church and, in no time, the man that owned the land called Brother Paul.“I don’t know why I’m selling you this land,” the owner said, “but how much of it do you want?”“All of it,” Brother Paul said. It was about 30 acres. After Brother Paul and Opal bought the property, they donated two acres of it for the new church and Step of Faith was born.

Broken Arm and Goiter Healed

Healing was another area my grandmother had tremendous faith for. Not only had numerous prayers for her family’s health been answered, God did miracles when she prayed for others to be healed. Once a church member, Henry Tackett, who would start a new job on a Monday, broke his arm the Friday before. Well, Henry needed that arm to work! Sunday in church, Grandma Sylvia and another brother from the church prayed for him. All of a sudden, the man started taking off his splint and he was totally healed! Another time my grandmother prayed for Sammy Patterson, who had a thyroid goiter.

After the service, they all walked out on the porch of the church, and Sammy spit up the goiter and was healed completely!

Blessed with Money to GiveMy  grandmother  didn’t  have  much  money, but  she  knew how to pray for what she desired, and God would supply in such unexpected ways! Once, when Step of Faith started, she had asked God for money to help with the building project. Soon after that, she heard about a meeting that was going to take place in a Nigerian Church in Floyd, Texas, about ten minutes from her home in Farmersville, and she and my mother and some other ladies wanted to help. Their job was to wave banners as all the buses arrived and then welcome everyone as they got off the buses. My grandmother did this like she did everything, joyfully and praying in the Spirit.Somehow during the service, these ladies found out that my grandmother was the little redheaded woman that Brother Kenneth E. Hagin, now a prominent minister, had talked about in his books. So, the ladies came up to my grandmother and said, “Can you lay hands and pray for me?” Of course, she could not wait to pray for them. She loved praying for anybody!But then the women started giving her money. My grandmother said, “Oh no, no! You don’t have to pay me to pray for you. It’s my honor to pray for you.”But they said, “We want to bless the woman of God.”

She still wouldn’t take the money, so the ladies just started stuffing the money in her pockets.

As my mother and grandmother were driving home, my mother asked, “What have you been praying and believing for?”She said, “I asked the Lord for money so I can give it to the church.”“Well,” my mother said, “look in your pockets and let’s see how much money the Lord blessed you with.”My grandmother counted it. Then she told my mother to stop the car so she could dance and shout and praise God for His faithfulness. It was almost $300.The Lord once told my grandmother, “I will reveal mysteries if you stay in my presence.” So she would, and stood on Jeremiah 33:3, “Call to me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”

Runaway Comes Home

During the 1940s, my grandmother and several other ladies were all a part of a prayer group. After their pastor, Brother Hagin, had taught on the gifts of the Spirit, they asked him if they could pray ask God for a word of knowledge about something. There was a woman in the church who, before she was a Christian, had her 16-year-old daughter disappear. The police thought, because the girl was involved with a motorcycle gang they were closing in on, perhaps the gang had killed her to keep her from giving too much information if she was arrested. They had even dragged the city lake, but never found her body. Others thought the motorcycle gang had kidnapped her when they left town. Either way she was never heard from again.Most everyone assumed the girl was dead. It had been 23 years, but the girl’s mother, now a Christian, felt in her spirit that her daughter was alive, so she asked the prayer group if they’d mind praying and asking God about it. They, in turn, asked the pastor what he thought.“Couldn’t God give us a word of knowledge?” They asked the pastor. He told them he sure might, so they started praying and during a prayer meeting.

There were tongues and interpretation and my grandmother saw in the Spirit that the missing girl was alive.

My grandma also said by interpretation that, within 30 days, the mother would hear from her daughter.Some of the people in the church who were not a part of the prayer group went to Brother Hagin and told him to stop them from praying for that lady’s daughter. “That woman is dead, everybody knows that.” But Brother Hagin said my grandmother was the most spiritual person in the church, and he trusted her interpretation. He told those people he wasn’t going to stop them from praying. “Besides,” he told them, “All you have to do is wait 30 days anyway to see if it comes to pass.”Well it did come to pass, and the daughter got in touch with her mom and eventually they were able to reunite. Another prayer answered.