Many people don't think about prayer as an open door of service to the Lord. But much good is wrought in the Kingdom of God by the faithful prayers of God's people.
For example, at the Pentecostal church I pastored when I first came over into the Full Gospel Movement, there was a little lady who lived in a nearby town who was about eighty-two years old.
This woman was not a member of my church, but she would visit my church quite frequently because it wasn't too far from where she lived.
I pastored in a little country town with a population of only a few hundred. Most of my congregation consisted of farmers who lived in the farming area round about, and some lived in town.
Well, we'd have a fellowship meeting every Sunday, and forty to seventy people would attend.
We'd go to someone's home to have a potluck dinner and a time of fellowship. It was harvest time in the fall of the year, so we only had services on the weekends. We dismissed our Wednesday night service because people were out harvesting their crops and picking cotton.
This woman would come to these Sunday fellowship meetings that were held in someone's home. As soon as the dinner was over, she would fellowship a little bit, but then she would find a bedroom where she could pray.
Many of those old farm homes back in the '30s didn't have rugs on the floor; some of them didn't even have linoleum. Many of them just simply had old, rough, bare wooden floors.
The woman would ask for a magazine or a newspaper or something she could spread on the floor, and then she would get on her knees and pray the rest of the afternoon.
While the rest of us were visiting, fellowshipping, and enjoying one another's company, she was praying. I learned that she had lived in Dallas, Texas, and had received the baptism of the Holy Ghost way back at the turn of the century.
After she was filled with the Spirit, she just took it upon her heart to pray a Full Gospel church into every town and city in north Texas. She made a business of prayer. In other words, she made it her business to live a life of prayer to God.
One of the neighboring pastors didn't have a parsonage, so the woman told this pastor and his wife, "If you want to, you can live in my house." So they built a partition and made an apartment on one side of her house so the pastor and his wife could live there.
This pastor said that the woman would always arise at 8 a.m. every morning and pray from then until 10 in the morning!
Then, she'd have something to eat; sometimes would fellowship with the pastor and his wife. But by 2 p.m., she was back on her knees praying. She would pray until 6 p.m.
Then maybe she would eat dinner, but by 7 p.m. or so, she would be right back at prayer again and pray nearly all night long.
She did that night after night, day after day, month after month. That was her service unto the Lord. No one else knew what she was doing because she prayed in the privacy of her own home. But God saw it.
So town by town, city by city, this woman prayed until a Full Gospel church was established in every one of those towns and in every one of those cities. She prayed until it happened.
I'm well satisfied that when some of those pastors who established churches in those early days finally get up to Heaven, they are going to get all ready to step up for their reward.
Then the Lord is going to call that praying woman forward for the reward instead. You see, she served the Lord by praying! Maybe she couldn't preach a sermon or go visit the sick. But there was something she could do—she could pray!
This should be a lesson to all of us, especially those who say, "But I don't know what to do to serve the Lord." God is not negligent in opening doors of service for each one of us, but many have been negligent in walking through the doors He opens!
by Kenneth Hagin.
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications