He Came Back -- Prayer Works!

While reading through some old files I came across this story that I wanted to share because it so clearly shows the power of prayer and the grace of God.

Several years ago I worked as a counselor at Helping Up Mission, a shelter/rehab program in Baltimore. I had a small group of praying friends who regularly went to God on behalf of our clients.

One day I asked these friends to pray for a very dear man who had graduated from the program at the Mission and had stayed on as an intern. Some things in his life had overwhelmed him. As a result he “went back out.” He started drinking again. 

He left the program and we didn’t hear from him for a few weeks. Then he showed up in our parking lot one very cold morning – drunk, hungry, smelly and hypothermic. We got him some clothes, coffee and food, and took him to a hospital detox. Later we heard he walked away from the detox.

Weeks went by without any word. Then one afternoon he showed up again. He had IV tubes sticking out of his left arm, a hospital bracelet on his right wrist, and he was very drunk. He said he’d been living on the streets and the police had taken him that morning to a nearby hospital for detox, but he had walked away again. 

When he was in our program he had done well and was a role model to others. The guilt from thinking he had let everyone down was consuming him. The solution he had come up with to deal with his guilt and remorse was to try to drink himself to death, and he was doing a very good job of it. It broke my heart. 

I did everything I could think of to assure him that we loved him. He just kept repeating, “But I’ve messed up, I've messed up so bad.”

“Yes, you’ve messed up,” I told him,” but we still love you and we want you. This is home and it’s safe. But you have to be sober.” We took him back to the hospital and told him that when he had finished detox to call. He could come back in the program. 

Once again, I contacted friends and asked them to pray. I hoped to get a call early that week to come to the hospital to pick him up. When none came I was pretty sure my friend was either drunk on the streets or already dead. 

I was sick that week and out of touch with what’ was going on in the program. So imagine my pleased surprise when I walked into Friday chapel, the time when men are officially welcomed into the program, and there in the front row sat my friend. Still a little unsteady on his feet, but alive, sober and home with people who loved him.

Addiction is a terrible thing. Combined with guilt and remorse the grip can be nearly impossible to break. That’s where my friend was. Locked in that kind of grip, a death grip. Without any doubt, I know, that it was only by God’s grace that he didn’t die and made his way back to program. I know that there is power in the prayers of God people. I saw it work.

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