Gold is purified in a furnace after being fired seven times. God had put us into a white-hot furnace, and the dross was rising to the top. After being in the apartment for a few months, I approached the leadership about starting a Saturday night prayer meeting at our church in Lawson. The name of the prayer group was Burning Coals and Drops of Blood, a prayer meeting designed to reach the throne of God.
Burning Coals and Drops of Blood was the name we selected, but the style of prayer was based on a method of spiritual warfare praying that was introduced to us through a video sermon by Rev. Roberts Lairdon named “The Roar of the 90’s.”1 We had anywhere from 6 to 12 people showing up on Saturday evenings who would pray with all of their might for one hour. We would pray for the church, for the missionaries, and various prayer requests that were made throughout the week.
Our name was derived from the form of prayer that Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. Scripture indicates that when He prayed he sweat, as it were, great drops of blood. Burning coals would signify a group of people praying or burning together in order to produce a greater concert result. Scripture says, “One puts to flight a thousand, and two put to flight ten thousand,”2 confirming that God’s power is with us whenever we will get into serious prayer. This form of prayer has produced awesome results over the years, and if anyone can overcome feelings of self-conscientiousness and inhibitions of praying differently from the norm, they will be able to see the hand of God in mighty ways.
To illustrate the intensity of the spiritual warfare going on in Lawson during the weekend of the first prayer meeting, our apartment flooded during a severe thunderstorm. We had no idea where or how the water came in, but it rose at least six inches in a matter of minutes, drenching the carpet and all of the clothing we had in boxes on the floor.
We went through the rigors of cleaning everything and moving a couple of doors down until our apartment was ready for habitation again. As time for the second prayer meeting arrived, there came another storm, and the apartment flooded again! “God, there is something wrong with this picture, we shouted out of desperation.” “Please help us,” I prayed. We did some inspecting and discovered that the city had failed to maintain a storm drain behind the apartment, and it was almost fully blocked with debris, which provided for the rapid rise of storm water. A call to the city produced the needed solution, and when the third storm came, praise God no flooding.
In Kansas we were introduced to berm-housing, housing that is partially underground. This led to some of the problem with flooding. After the second flooding, we did not move back into that apartment. Our lease was running out; we were at the end of July (Janie’s birthday, the 31st), so we decided to head to the coast. We had an outside hope that maybe the ordeal was over, but inwardly we had no witness, just one big hope!