Shannon’s Story

Feb 24, 2010

 I have a brother seven years older than me. When he was still in high school and I was in elementary school, we went to New Beginnings Baptist Church. I looked up to him in a lot of ways including spiritually. Once he got married and moved out, we still had a close relationship, but we never had any God conversations anymore. I had no idea where he was in his walk and I hated that! God had really laid it on my heart to talk to him about it, but I never did. For several years, I did nothing but wonder. I never questioned his salvation, but it killed me to not know where he was spiritually because he’s my brother and I love him. One day he came over to talk to my Dad, and he ended up talking to me as well. He was telling me about some hard stuff that he was going through like work and having a baby due in a few months being a little stressful. Well, the previous Sunday night at bible study, Michael challenged us to pray with someone when given the chance. Not to just say, “okay, yeah I’ll pray for you,” but to actually take the time right then to pray with them. The entire time we were having this pretty intense conversation, that was all that was going through my mind! So when he was done talking, I told him about the challenge from Michael, and then asked if I could pray with him. He said yes so I began to pray. This “simple prayer” turned into quite a long prayer and basically a cry fest. After I said Amen, we sat in silence for a few minutes both crying still. After I was able to talk again, I told him, “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that.” His response was, “You don’t know how long I’ve needed it!” From then on, it was just a really awesome God conversation! It was definitely something that we both needed and I am super thankful that it finally happened. I could really feel the spirit of God at work in my brother’s heart and that gave me overwhelming joy.